


free to breathe

by Katranga



Series: Ride or Die [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Galra Keith (Voltron), Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Open and honest communication, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, he was raised Galra, recovery and feelings, some humour hopefully, themes of morality and redemption, touch-starved lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-01-30 01:57:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 46,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12643809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katranga/pseuds/Katranga
Summary: Lance woke with a flinch, chest heaving, palms sweaty.Gentle fingers stroked his hair, a warm presence at his side. “You’re on the castle ship, you’re safe, you’re okay.”Lance took a shuddering breath, looking at Keith next to him on the bed. Purple eyes half-lidded, barely awake, but his face and fluffy ears tilted toward Lance in clear attentiveness.He tugged on Keith’s shirt. Without hesitation, Keith rolled over to stretch out on top of Lance, his reassuring weight grounding him in reality. Reminding him of the soft mattress under his back, the smell of the Altean soap they all used, the simple fact that he was home. He was safe.--Lance escaped the Galra prison, and is back with his friends on the castle ship. But he returned with something none of them had predicted--Keith, his half-Galra ally within the prison, and now the red paladin of Voltron. But the team is nowhere near close to trusting Keith, and Lance is nowhere close to forgetting his time spent captured by the Galra. A story about recovery, redemption, and trust.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back, baby!
> 
> First off, I can't thank you all enough for all the support for audience of one. I hope this fic lives up to expectations!! I do wanna note that this is not, like, an action story again. There are some action scenes, but the focus is recovery, not, y'know, the fight for the universe or anything. That takes a back seat in this one lol.
> 
> I hope I do this theme justice. I haven't been in anything similar to Lance's (or Keith's) situations, so this is based off research and how I think these characters would react, but hopefully it's at least mildly accurate.
> 
> Also, this was originally an epilogue (ha!) so it was supposed to be more like snapshots of Lance's recovery. Obviously that didn't quite work out, but if the tone vacillates wildly between chapters, that's why.
> 
> Similar to the first fic, I'll note at the start of chapters that have nightmares/panic attacks/flashbacks etc, but if you've got any concerns about content, or just questions in general, hmu on tumblr or the comments.  
> Finally, big shout out to my beta, spookyknight, for soothing my concerns and giving me great tips on how to make this fic better!

“Lance. Lance, are you listening?” Shiro asked from the head of the meeting room table. _This meeting is for you_ , hung unspoken in the air.

Lance straightened in his seat, nodding sharply. He’d only been back on the ship a few days, but he was ready to get right back in on the action. And Shiro wasn’t going to sign off on that if Lance couldn’t focus for one lousy meeting.

After another moment of consideration, Shiro turned back to the holo-screen behind him, discussing the charts and statistics that Allura and Pidge had prepared. 

Lance tried to listen to the words actually coming out of Shiro’s mouth, instead of whatever his mind was making up for him—that this in-depth debrief of Voltron’s accomplishments without him was proof that they didn’t need him, that the team had only wasted their time rescuing him.

“And we completed all these missions without Lance’s usual interference,” Shiro was saying. “So everything went off without a hitch.”

Lance swallowed past a dry throat, squeezing Keith’s hand hard under the table.

Keith squeezed back. “Excuse me, could you repeat that? You said you were planning to return to the Lryxiaa system?”

Shiro nodded. “Not right now of course, since Lance is just as likely to shoot us as he is a Galra—except for you, Keith. We’re stuck with you.”

Lance shook his head, trying to clear it. Some of that was probably fake.

Shiro turned to him, worry tugging his lips down. “There’s no rush to return to active duty, Lance. Take all the time you need.”

Lance forced a smile. “I don’t need time. I’m ready now.”

Allura rose to stand next to Shiro. “Not for our next mission, Lance. As Shiro said, once the Galra prison ship you were held on leaves the Lryxiaa system, we’ll be checking up on those planets who rebelled against the Galra during your escape. Hopefully that will be soon.”

“The Galra will want to confirm that we aren’t coming back before leaving,” Keith said, speaking more to the tabletop than to Allura’s face. “That could take some time.”

“Neither Lance nor Keith will be joining us,” Allura said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Obviously. Keith is a danger to us all, and since I can pilot Blue, Lance has been rendered superfluous.”

Lance’s nails dug into Keith’s forearm. He leaned closer, whispering in his ear. “Blue won’t let her fly her. Right?”

“Allura never said she would,” Keith assured him quietly. “Can you shut up and listen please?”

Lance ducked his head, face burning. “Sorry.”

The scowl he always wore deepened into a concerned frown. “What do you think I said, Lance?”

Hunk leaned across the table, nosy to a fault. _What’s wrong_? he mouthed.

Lance waved him off.

Nothing, it was nothing. He was fine. Everything was fine.

“Lance, if this is too much, we can have this meeting later,” Shiro said. He’d only agreed to do this today because Lance had begged to be brought up to speed.

“Nope, not too much!” Lance replied with an overwide grin, frayed at the edges. “I’m ready for anything.”

Shiro remained unconvinced, along with the rest of the team, but he continued anyway.

Lance wasn’t sure if Shiro got through all the material or just decided to cut it short, but Shiro ended the meeting a few minutes later.

Lance had to admit, he was relieved. He was tired, he was antsy, and he’d be having trouble focusing even without his mind playing tricks on him.

He immediately regretted his relief when Shiro asked Lance to hang back after.

“It’s normal for hallucinations to linger, even after you’ve left a traumatic situation,” Shiro was saying.

Which Lance knew. They’d learned that at the Garrison, and Shiro had already discussed it with him at length. Shiro had engaged Lance in more deep discussions in the past few days than the entirety of the time before he was captured.

“But it’ll pass, okay? Until then, it’s not worth the risk to get you out there. You know that.”

Lance bounced on his toes, squeezing his elbows to simulate human contact. “But after that, I can get back to fighting?”

 “We’ll see,” he said in an uncanny impression of Lance’s dad in response to Lance asking for a puppy for his seventh birthday. Spoiler alert: he’d got a gerbil.

But Lance belonged in the field. He needed to save people. Start redeeming himself for what he did to those prisoners. Prove that he was a better blue paladin than Allura so they wouldn’t replace him.

He couldn’t just _sit around_ waiting to get better.

Shiro put a hand on his shoulder. “Too much too fast is only going to hurt you, Lance.”

Lance bit the inside of his cheek. “I know. Thanks. I gotta go.”

The rest of them were hanging in the hallway, not eavesdropping just… making sure Lance wasn’t alone, not even for a second.

Which Lance was more than grateful for.

What he didn’t love was the way Allura was eyeing Keith, who was leaning against the wall across from her, rubbing at his ear.

His dark eyes scanned Lance instinctively for injuries after their few minutes apart. When he’d assured himself there was nothing physically wrong with him, Keith jerked his chin in the direction of their rooms and quirked a brow.

As much as Lance wanted to turn down his offer to lie down—to grab a snack instead, or hang out with Hunk and Pidge, or train, or do something the least bit productive—he was barely keeping himself from falling into Keith’s chest and clinging to him in the middle of the hall like a baby koala.

Which was another reason why no one believed him when he said he was fine.

But he was _tired_.

“Kay, I’m gonna lie down for a bit,” Lance announced to disperse the group.

Pidge and Coran nodded and left without a fuss, followed by Shiro, which left Hunk and Allura and an awkward air around Keith.

Lance wasn’t sure if Allura was completely aware that Lance had been sleeping—purely _sleeping_ —with Keith since he got back. He’d spent one night with Hunk, which was what he told her if the subject came up. But it was getting so exhausting pretending that Keith didn’t spend every night in Lance’s room, and that a nap with Keith wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

He sent a begging look at Hunk to smooth out the situation.

Hunk was on it, because he was the best. “Hey, Allura, the mice were looking for you earlier. I think they have a new dance routine.”

“Oh, then I’d best be off,” she said, comfortable leaving Keith and Lance alone under Hunk's watchful eye. “Have a nice rest, Lance.”

Hunk left them after one final check that Lance was alright.

Then Keith took Lance’s hand and they went back to his room.

 

A week later, it came to Lance's attention that the team actually _would_ be leaving he and Keith behind for their next mission.

“Like what the heck?” Lance complained. He was leaning on the kitchen counter, where he and Pidge were watching Hunk bake. “Does Allura realize we’ll be all _alone_ if we can’t go with you?”

“I mean, the mice will be here,” Hunk said. “I think she’s counting on them to call her if anything happens.”

“Ridiculous,” Lance dismissed. “Give me one good reason why I can't go.”

Pidge responded without hesitation. “Because you thought it was part of a hallucination until five minutes ago.”

Lance shot her a dirty look.

“Pidge,” Hunk said with a hint of a reprimand.

“What?” She wrapped her arms around Lance’s waist, her forehead digging into his collarbone. “He’s back, that means I can make fun of him.”

Lance squeezed her tight in return. “Yeah, I missed that. Not this, though.” He tugged at the back of her hair. “Was I really gone long enough for you to grow a mullet?”

She shoved him, but he grabbed her before she could escape, draping himself over her back. She elbowed him in the ribs and retorted, “You like Keith’s.”

Hunk pointed a mixing spoon at her. “Did you just admit to having a mullet?”

“No!”

“C’mon,” Lance laughed, wrestling with Pidge as she tried to gain the upper hand. “Lemme cut your hair.”

“I’d end up with a bowl cut.” She got an arm around his neck _somehow_ —the little fucker was fast—and noogied him.

The swish of the kitchen door swished open, followed by a gasp. “Pidge! Unhand him, he’s fragile as a little baby.”

Pidge released him.

Lance straightened, snapping at Allura, “I’m not—” before biting his tongue.

He took a deep breath. Would Allura realistically say that?

No.

Probably not, right?

“We were just fooling around,” Pidge said when Lance didn’t continue.

“I recommend keeping the roughhousing to a minimum,” Allura said. “Lance is supposed to be resting.”

He waved a hand at himself. “Do I not look well-rested?”

Pidge snorted. “You don’t want me to answer that.”

Lance lunged at her. “C’mere, you little—”

She yelped, running behind Hunk for cover. “Help, he’s gonna get me in trouble!”

Allura narrowed her eyes at Pidge, like she couldn’t believe someone was actually treating Lance normally, like he was a real person capable of knowing his own limits.

Allura, Shiro and Coran were all in agreement that Lance had no business being on their next mission, but what did they know? They had no idea what he could handle. No idea what he’d done.

He shook the bitter thoughts away, trying to keep things light by chatting up Allura. “So what’ve you been up to?”

Allura blinked at him. “Planning your rescue.”

“And?”

“Gathering resources for your rescue.”

“And _you_ , specifically?”

“Getting rejected by Blue until I announced your rescue.”

He wasn’t sure what to do with the swell of satisfaction that rose in his gut at the reminder that Blue was picky. Blue had missed him. Blue would never leave him for Allura. Right?

Lance fluttered his lashes. “Wow, Princess, it’s almost like you missed me.”

She gave him a flat look, before it softened into something a touch too sincere. “I did. We all did. And I just wanted to let you know, if you ever need someone to listen, I’m here.”

Which he knew. They’d all made it very clear that sharing his experiences would be much healthier than bottling everything up and having his stress fizzle up through horrible nightmares.

But that was just their _opinion_ , and Lance didn’t feel much like breaking down in the middle of the kitchen right now.

“It sucked,” Lance said in an attempt to satisfy her. “Did I mention those nutrition bricks?”

“Yup,” Hunk tossed out from where he was plopping dough balls onto a baking sheet. Pidge had jumped onto the counter and to help Hunk measure ingredients, and now she was trying to stick a finger into the batter to get a taste. He batted her away. “I’m making it up to you with these things, though.”

Lance shot him a thumbs up.

“Mm hm,” Allura hummed. “You’ve talked extensively about how unappealing the food was.”

‘Unappealing’ was putting it mildly. Lance had gagged trying to eat something resembling a granola bar the other day because it reminded him too much of those nutrition bars.

“What about your other experiences?” Allura prodded, like she knew he was hiding something irredeemable from them.

Sweat pricked the back of his neck.

But then she put a hand on his shoulder and said, “What about Keith?”

Lance stiffened. “He’s my _friend_. He helped me.”

“Of course,” Allura said placatingly.

A tense few moments passed, wherein Lance naively hoped the conversation was over.

“But you need to understand that a nice prison guard is still a prison guard,” bubbled out of Allura, like she just couldn’t help it. “And his harsh upbringing doesn’t excuse him hurting you—”

He took a step back, shaking her off.

But he paused before his hackles rose too high. Would Allura realistically say _that_?

Yes.

“When did I ever say he hurt me?” Lance said, forcing his tone to stay level.

She lifted a brow. “Hasn’t he?”

He decided to be honest. “I got bit of a bruise from him when I first got on the ship, but Lotor smashed my head against the wall, so—”

Her expression might’ve been pitying except for the smugness leaking across her features. “So in comparison Keith seems nicer. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“ _No_ ,” he said shrilly. “I’ve gotten beat up worse sparring with Pidge, it was nothing—”

“Compared to everything else you endured in that place. But Keith hurting you less than the other Galra doesn’t make him a good—”

He drew himself up, shoulders pulled back. “With all due respect Princess, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Lance,” Hunk said, barely a rumble but a soft warning all the same. “She’s just looking out for you.”

Lance stared at him incredulously.

He lifted a shoulder, a silent _Sorry dude_. Because Hunk was with Allura on this one.

After all Lance and Hunk had been through, after all Lance had done to get back to the people he cared about—they were going to dismiss Lance, toss Keith aside, like they knew better, like they knew _anything_.

Pidge sat cross-legged on the counter, wide eyes pinging between the three of them.

“Seriously, do you all think I’m stupid?” Lance demanded. “Keith never hurt me.”

Allura flattened the wrinkles in her skirt. “That’s a pretty low bar—”

“He saved my _life_!” His voice cracked. “You have no idea—”

Pidge slipped off the counter, landing on the floor with a slap. “Yeah, we get it, you think Keith’s rad. You don’t have to yell about it.”

Lance rounded on her, ready to retort before her words sunk in.

She tilted her head toward the hall, voice dry but calm all the same. “He’s been teaching me all about Galra tech. You wanna see what he’s been helping me with?”

“I guess,” he said, heartbeat returning to its normal pace. “Yeah.” He shot a glare at Hunk and Allura. “Thanks Pidge, my loyal friend. My good pal, who has always stuck by me—”

“Yeah, yeah, come on.” She grabbed his sleeve and dragged him out of the room.

“Lance,” Hunk’s tired voice followed him into the hall.

But what was he going to do? Apologize for not believing Lance? For not giving Keith a chance to prove he could be part of the team?

“I can’t believe them,” Lance grumbled to Pidge.

She sighed. “Yes, you can.”

He tugged his sleeve out of her grasp, still grumpy. “What?”

“Lance, c’mon. Hunk is always gonna worry about you, and the Galra literally killed Allura’s whole civilization. You _know_ why they’re like this.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but he couldn’t.

Sure, he understood the equation they were doing. Keith was Galra, Galra were bad, therefore, ergo, obviously—Keith was bad. The math was solid.

He wasn’t mad that Allura and Hunk didn’t trust Keith. He was pissed they weren’t even trying to. And annoyed that Allura kept trying to trick Lance into seeing Keith as the enemy.

“Doesn’t mean I have to put up with it,” he said.

Like, if he were in their place, he’d be suspicious too. But he couldn’t _say_ that. He couldn’t show anything but unwavering support for Keith for one second, or Allura would jump on his moment of doubt and toss Keith out the airlock.

Pidge slipped an arm through his. “Just remember we’re all on the same team here. Nobody’s out to get you, okay?”

Lance looked at her. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t hallucinating, was I?”

They were getting less frequent, he was pretty sure. Maybe.

“I don’t think so,” Pidge said. “I get where you’re coming from, I just… I don’t like having to take sides when you’re all technically right.”

Stress weighed her shoulders down, and Lance was reminded how young Pidge was. It was easy to forget, but easy to remember too, when exhaustion crushed of her small frame.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said sincerely. “I know we shouldn’t fight in front of the children.”

“Shut up.” She elbowed him, though a small grin popped onto her face. “Just give them time. They’ll get used to him eventually. And then everything can get back to normal.”

Normal, yeah. That would be ideal.

Lance hung out with her in the lab for the rest of afternoon, mostly just bugging her, until Keith finished training with Shiro. Then she could actually get some work done, because Lance let her be in favour of his favourite past time—explaining Earth culture to Keith.

Keith watched Lance talk with an amused expression, elbow propped on the work station with his head in his hand. Hair and ears damp from his shower, exertion still tinting his light purple cheeks with pink.

Lance had to shake himself from his distraction.

“So then Darth Vader says _Luke, I am your father_ ,” Lance wheezed in full dramatic fashion.

 “He doesn’t, actually,” Pidge said without looking up from her tinkering. “It’s a misquote. Nobody ever says _Beam me up, Scotty_ , either.”

Before Lance could dismiss accuracy as being unimportant, Keith spoke up. “Wait, who’s Scotty?”

“He’s in _Star Trek_.”

“Isn’t that what we’re talking about?” he asked.

“No.” Lance thunked his forehead against Keith’s shoulder with a little groan. “This is _Star Wars_.”

“Have you not told him about _Star Trek_?” Pidge asked, aghast.

Lance rolled his eyes and explained, “There’s this other space show and there’s two guys named Kirk and Spock in it. They’re in love. That about sums it up. Now back to _Star Wars_ —”

The door slid open and Hunk walked in. He set a plate of cookies on the counter and inserted himself into the conversation like everything was cool. “Are we talking prequels, originals, or reboots?”

Lance cocked his head at him expectantly.

Hunk nudged the plate closer, brows drawing together in apology.

“Originals,” Lance said without taking a cookie.

Hunk nodded, and then turned to Keith, offering an awkward smile. “And what are your thoughts so far?”

Keith blinked, straightening out of his slouch. “Um. The swords seem interesting.”

Pidge snorted. “Figures.”

Lance grabbed a cookie and took a bite. Delicious, though nothing like the cookies back home. He raised it at Hunk. “Another slam dunk, dude.”

Hunk smiled back at him, relieved. “Good. Keith, uh, do you want one?”

Keith tentatively nibbled on a cookie, nodding in appreciation.

Time, Lance told himself. They all just needed some time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember in my final author's note for audience of one when I said this was gonna be 6 chapters? JOKES. I have never, in my life, shut up. And I wanted to do their story justice, so I just... kept writing lol. Now it's about 40k, in case you were wondering.
> 
> Anyway, I've got the whole fic all written out already, but there's plenty of little edits I still wanna do, and also I'm working now, so updates will probably be like every 2 weeks instead of once a week.
> 
> Also, title is from Free to Breathe by Cold War Kids. Check it out, it's thematically relevant.
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts so far! Comments are my life blood!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your enthusiasm!!! I can't respond to every comment because of y'know, time, but I read and cherish every one! I hope you guys like this chapter.

Soon enough, the Galra prison ship cleared out of the Lyrxxia system where it had been dangling Lance as bait, so the team was ready to check in with the surrounding planets that had rebelled against the Galra on Lance’s behalf.

Allura had landed the castle on an uninhabited planet, where it would stay while everyone but Keith and Lance went out on mission.

The team was getting ready to go in the hangar, which left Lance doing his best to seem useful while whining about not being allowed to go.

He passed a box of med kits to Shiro. “C’mon, I’m fine. I’m fine!”

If he kept repeating it, one day it would have to be true.

“You’ve been making great progress,” Shiro said, just like every other time Lance argued his point. Then he disappeared into Black with the supplies, effectively ending that conversation.

Lance crossed his arms grumpily. “What if we need to form Voltron?”

“Almost all of the soldiers would’ve returned to the prison ship before it left,” Keith reminded him. “I doubt Voltron will be necessary.”

“If it’s gonna be safe, the why can’t I _go_?”

It was Allura who answered, always able to sense when Keith and Lance had a moment alone and butt in. “Because we’re certainly not bringing a Galra back to the planets he and his people have ravaged, nor are we leaving him alone on our ship. So you are tasked with keeping an eye on Keith.”

Which was how she’d been spinning this after Lance put up a fight about staying behind.

Unsurprisingly, having a ‘task’ didn’t console him in the slightest.

The mice squeaked from the ground, scurrying around their feet. Chuchule plopped onto the toe of Keith’s shoe, indicating that they were all on the job, too.

Allura’s face tore with indecision. “Perhaps I should stay behind after all.”

“What? No!” Lance couldn’t imagine a more agonizing trio than himself, Keith, and Allura stuck alone for a week.

After she’d found out Lance and Keith were spending their nights together, she’d made a point to wake them up each morning for breakfast, even after Shiro had convinced her that Lance could make his own decisions.

That was, until she popped her head into Lance having a meltdown, hallucinating that he was back on the ship and she was a Galra soldier coming to take him away. Keith, cradling Lance in his arms doing his best to calm him down, had yelled at her to get out.

She’d stopped coming by in the mornings, but she was still intensely displeased with the situation.

Lance put a hand on her shoulder, directing her to Green, where she’d be flying with Pidge. “You need to go. You have diplomat-ing to do.”

She shook her head. “The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of you two alone.”

Hunk waved his wrench as they passed by him and Yellow. “I could always hang back—”

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Lance insisted.

Keith frowned but nodded in support a few feet away, where Lance had left him. Coran muttered something about Earth childrearing practices to him.

“I mean,” Lance began, walking backwards to respond to Hunk’s fallen face. “Buddy, I always wanna hang out, but if you guys hate the idea of leaving us here so much, you should let us _come_.”

Allura dug her heels in. Lance stumbled into her.

“No,” she said once she straightened.

Why was she so insistent? They were keeping him from dangerous situations—sure, fine. But if all the Galra had left, what was the problem? Did they seriously think he couldn’t handle chatting up some aliens?

If they were so sure they could handle missions without him, why did they bother rescuing him? If Allura could fly Blue, if she could take his place… why did they save him if they didn’t need him?

“It’s probably gonna be really boring,” Hunk tried. 

Lance didn’t realize he was shaking until Keith came up beside him and laid a steady hand between his shoulder blades, grounding him and dragging him out of his head.

Coran joined them as well. “They’ll be fine, Princess. And Lance is right—there will be plenty of diplomat-ing for you to do! And plenty of resting for Lance to do.”

From the corner of his eye, Lance saw Keith sneak a peek at him. They kept a running tally every time the team mentioned Lance ‘resting’. Like the only thing preventing his return to normalcy was his irregular sleeping schedule.

The reminder of their inside joke was enough to calm Lance down, just a little more.

“Or I could stay back,” Pidge called from Green. “I’ve got plenty of stuff to do in the lab—”

“You’re going,” Shiro said as he strode up to them. “We all are.”

Lance jumped on the opportunity. “Perfect—”

Shiro cut him a pleading look that quieted Lance. He turned back to the group. “Are we ready to go?”

“Looks like it!”

“Then let’s head out.”

Hunk hugged Lance goodbye, and Allura promised to check in on them every night through video chat. Then she reluctantly followed Pidge to Green.

At least she wasn’t flying Blue.

He felt Blue reassure him from across the hangar, a calming presence settling over his mind. Everything was fine.

 Shiro hung back to address Keith and Lance one last time. “Lance, even if you were allowed to come, Keith wouldn’t be, and you don’t want to leave him all alone for a week, do you?”

Keith snapped to attention when they both looked at him, pulling his shoulders back, chin raised like a soldier.

Lance huffed. “No.” He continued just as Shiro was looking confident he’d won the argument. “But how long are we gonna leave Keith out just because he’s Galra?”

“Until his probationary period is over.”

“And when’s that gonna be?”

Shiro sighed, because this wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. Or the second. Or the third. He ran a hand over his face, pulling at the bags darkening the skin under his eyes.

Lance lifted his palms in surrender. “Fine, fine. I’ll stay. But I’m not happy about it.”

“I noticed,” Shiro said, posture softening with relief. “But thank you for understanding.”

He shook his head. “Thank the rebels and their families. And y’know, make sure they know I appreciate their courage and…” His voice dropped, “Their sacrifice. And that I’m sorry.”

Keith’s fingers tightened in the back of Lance’s jacket. Lance leaned into his side.

Shiro’s eyes followed the movement. “I will,” he said gently.

“Let’s go if we’re going!” Pidge called from Green’s open mouth.

“We’ll be back in a few days,” Shiro said. He walked backward, pointing a finger at each of them. “And remember, no lions.”

In case trouble found them outside the castle without backup. It made sense, but it was super annoying. What else were they supposed to _do_?

Lance watched his team fly away in their lions, out into space to save the universe.

They’d all been spending a lot of time in their lions. As much as Allura didn’t want to rely on Keith, she’d been training them hard so they’d be able to form Voltron at a moment’s notice. It took a bit more effort when they weren’t in the heat of battle, but they were figuring it out.

And the lions were one of the few training practices Lance was currently allowed to do.

“So. Concept,” Lance began. “We hop in our lions and follow them anyway.”

Keith waited a beat. Like he was considering it, maybe?

But then he said, “You have to be kidding.”

“What, you don’t wanna go on your first real Voltron mission?”

“Not when Shiro ordered us to stay on the ship,” he said incredulously. “Allura would just blame me for corrupting you, anyway.”

A solid argument.

Lance pouted, disappointed but getting it—then a thought struck him. “He didn’t tell us to stay on the ship.”

Keith’s ears flicked flat. “Uh, yes he did?”

“We’re not supposed to get in our _lions_.” He bounced on the balls of his feet. “He didn’t say anything about going outside.”

Lance grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the closest ship exit. “C’mon, Hunk’s already been out there searching for recipe inspiration.”

He hadn’t found anything, because it was mostly just desert and cliffs, but the air was breathable and there was nothing liable to attack them. Totally mostly safe!

“Okay, as long as we don’t go too far from the ship,” Keith said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance said, hitting the unlock button for the door. “I don’t need an adventure, just— _outside_.”

The door slid open to reveal desert and scrub, some big rocks and cliff overhangs all in a dull beige colour. Not every planet was breathtakingly otherworldly. That didn’t matter.

Lance stepped off the ship and took a long, deep inhale of unfiltered air for the first time in months.

“Oh my god that’s good,” Lance groaned. It felt like he could get high off it, like sucking in pure oxygen.

And that wasn’t even the best part.

Two suns shone at opposite ends of the sky, both weaker than Earth’s, farther away and smaller, and Lance couldn’t get enough.

He whipped his shirt off after about .4 seconds, citing the need for Vitamin D.

“Shiro said the food goo provides all essential nutrients and vitamins,” Keith said, frowning a little as he scanned the horizon, like he expected an attack.

“I don’t doubt that.” Lance walked until they were out of the castle’s shadow, and then spread out on the ground to sun tan. Dry, packed clay dusted with loose dirt warmed his back. “Not the same, though.”

He tucked his hands behind his head, ready to relax, but when he didn’t hear Keith settling down next to him, he peeked an eye open.

It took a few moments before Keith noticed Lance looking at him expectantly, and then he dragged his gaze off Lance’s chest.

Keith coughed awkwardly, turning back to their surroundings. “I should do a perimeter check—”

“You wanna make out?” Lance said at the same time.

“Whuh—no? I mean—yeah, but no?”

A grin slid across his face. “Why not? It’s not like anybody’ll walk in on us.”

Keith’s focus lingered on Lance’s lips before he shook his head. “Is that—is that your understanding of why we’re not doing that?”

“And so we don’t piss off Allura,” Lance said. The crease between Keith’s brows deepened. Lance sat up, dusty sand slipping down his bare back. “Do you have a different understanding?”

Keith open his mouth, but nothing came out.

“What?” Lance said, nerves spreading up his throat like a rash.

 _Do you not like me anymore?_ threatened to spill into the open. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep his neediness buried.

Keith slid his obvious apprehension behind a carefully constructed smile and took a seat next to Lance like he wasn’t acting weird. “You’d get too used to it in private and end up making out with me in front of all of them.”

Lance was about to press him further before Keith’s words registered.

And flirty banter was much easier to navigate than desperate questions about the nature of their relationship.

So Lance leaned closer, quirking a brow. “Oh?”

Keith turned his head away, a delicate blush colouring his lavender cheeks.

“I’m the _only_ one who’d do that?” Lance teased, a touch too close to Keith’s mouth, probably.

“Lance,” he said, almost a whine. “Your friends still hate me.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Some of them do.”

And Lance wanted to say that didn’t matter. But it did, actually. It kind of mattered a lot, that the team wasn’t cohesive, that half his friends thought Keith would betray them all.

“I’m—I’m trying,” Keith said, drawing his knees to his chest. “To fit in.”

“I know you are,” Lance assured him. “And it’s not all on you. Everybody just…”

“Needs time.”

Lance groaned, dropping his head on Keith’s shoulder. “Yeah. That.”

Keith’s fingers found their way to Lance’s hair, as usual. He didn’t offer anything more comforting than that. Back in the cell, Keith had been so intent on reassuring Lance that his friends would rescue him, but when it came to soothing words about Keith’s own fate, he had nothing.

“It’ll be fine,” Lance said, because he needed to hear it out loud.

Keith nodded, not at all convinced.

“Keith, say it’ll be fine.”

Keith’s dark eyes met his, glinting almost like amethyst in the bright sunlight. “It’ll be fine.”

One of these days it would have to be true.

 

“So what did you two do today?” Allura’s face lit up the tablet in Lance’s hand, a canvas tent behind her.

Lance stretched out on his bed. “Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that.”

“We went outside,” Keith said off screen, across the room but totally loud enough for Allura to hear.

“What?” Allura asked sharply.

Lance glared at Keith, who remained unrepentant. “Humans need sunlight, don’t they?”

“Yes,” Lance said. “Yes, they do, and Allura,” he said, turning back to the screen, where Allura looked no less pissed at them potentially putting themselves in danger, “I was locked up in that cell all that time without sunlight, without the sky, without unfiltered air—”

“Of course, of course,” Allura immediately changed her tune, guilt streaking her face.

And that made Lance’s guilt swell in turn, for milking his capture just so she wouldn’t get mad at them, but—it’s not like it wasn’t true. He’d missed being outside after so long.

They chatted for a few more minutes before Allura decided she was satisfied that Keith wasn’t suddenly holding Lance under duress.

Lance shot Keith another dirty look as he tossed the tablet on the bedside table. “Weren’t we going to keep that to ourselves?”

“She’d get even madder if she found out we hid it from her. Like us sleeping together—” he said pointedly. He had not been in favour of keeping that a secret.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re just lucky she still feels sorry for me.”

Keith shrugged, muttering, “They never said not to leave the ship.”

Lance laughed. “C’mon, it’s late.”

Keith crawled into bed next to him, and they did their best to sleep.

 

Lance was running. Through dark, endless halls. He didn’t know how long he’d been running or what he was running from, but he knew if he stopped, he’d be caught, and he’d never escape.

He hit a dead end.

Hopelessness rushed him, stealing his breath.

Out, out, he had to get _out_.

And then he saw a figure cowering in the corner, wide eyes and quivering lips.

A blaster appeared in Lance’s hands. He was aiming it in the corner, limbs moving without his go-ahead, but he could stop it he wanted to bad enough, he knew he could.

He pulled the trigger.

“No!” His shout echoed down the hall like a shot.

“Lance.” The voice came from far away. “Lance, it’s okay.”

He woke with a flinch, chest heaving, palms sweaty.

Gentle fingers stroked his hair, a warm presence at his side. “You’re on the castle ship, you’re safe, you’re okay.”

Lance took a deep breath, looking at Keith next to him on the bed. Purple eyes half-lidded, barely awake, but his face and fluffy ears tilted toward Lance in clear attentiveness.

He tugged on Keith’s shirt. Without hesitation, Keith rolled over to stretch out on top of Lance, his reassuring weight grounding him in reality. Reminding him of the soft mattress under his back, the scent of the Altean soap they all used, the simple fact that he was home, safe.

“Sorry, did I wake you up?” His voice was scratchy.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” After a few silent moments in the dark, his grip tightened around his ribs. “Are you okay?”

Lance swallowed back tears and hugged Keith to his chest. “Uh huh. Just stay.”

Keith buried his face in Lance’s neck. “Not going anywhere.”

 

A few days later, they ended up in the lounge. Normally Lance had five other people to bug to entertain him, but now it was all down to Keith again. And it wasn’t that Keith wasn’t taking his duties as Lance-entertainer seriously, it’s just that a giant space ship with only two people on board was unexpectedly _boring_.

“What do you wanna _do_?” Lance groaned, splayed across the couch as Keith polished his bayard.

“We could train,” Keith said.

Which Lance should’ve seen coming.

“No, something fun.”

He considered a moment. “I’ve been thinking about learning how to read Altean.”

He flopped around on the couch to face him. “Seriously? That’s your idea of fun?”

Keith shrugged. “What about teaching me to read a human language? What are you speaking? English?”

“Yeah.”

Lance tapped his chin. Teaching Keith something would be less painful than them both trying to learn Altean. And teaching Keith about Earth was basically a hobby by now.

“Okay.”

Lance dug around until he found some paper and a pen, and then he wrote out the alphabet.

But trying to connect words to letters didn’t quite work, because anything Lance pronounced in English immediately got translated to Galra for Keith, so he wasn’t getting any phonetic pronunciation. But he still knew what the words meant, so…? Lance’s head was hurting trying to decide if Keith was actually learning anything.

“Whatever,” he finally said. “Here’s my name.” Lance wrote it down. “And here’s yours.”

Then he drew a little smiley figure with stars in his eyes, and a big-eared frowny face.

“The resemblance is uncanny,” Keith said dryly. He grabbed the pen from Lance and wrote his and Lance’s name in sharp, smooth Galra script under the faces. “There.”

Lance smiled down at the paper. “Cute.”

Keith was smiling at Lance. And then they were smiling at each other.

“Oh!” Lance jumped up, promptly forgetting about language lessons. “I’ve got a way better idea, come on.”

Lance grabbed his hand and Keith scooped up the paper before following him out of the room.

Lance brought him to the holo-deck, and scrolled through the holographic projection of the universe. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this before.

He stopped on the third rock from the sun and proudly presented his home to Keith.

“Is that Earth?” Keith asked, face lit with an awed glow

“The one and only,” Lance said. He pointed out the important parts. “Here’s Cuba. And that’s America, where we went to school.” He waved a lazy hand at the mammoth country before spinning the planet around. “And here’s Asia, where your dad may be from? I mean, I’m guessing Korea specifically, but that’s a shot in the dark, and I’m not super sure where Korea is on the map anyway, so…”

“Show me Cuba again,” Keith said. Lance did so. “An island.” He smiled knowingly. “You must’ve liked all that water.”

“I did. I do.”

Keith pulled the paper they’d been writing on out of his pocket. “Can you write Earth for me?”

“Absolutely.” Lance pinned the paper on the wall and wrote Earth down, then drew a picture and noted some important countries.

When he returned to Keith, he was inspecting Earth with the same yearning he’d had when watching Lance in the cell. He handed the paper back to Keith, who tucked it safely away in his pocket.

Lance nodded at the projection. “Your dad could still be there, you know.”

He almost said when they got home, they could look for him. But would any human government welcome a literal, purple alien onto their planet?

Lance dismissed the concern for now. There was plenty of time to work out logistics. And so many obstacles between now and then.

“Or he could be dead,” Keith replied.

“Or he could be in space!”

“Yeah, running around with my mother after they both abandoned me.”

“Keith—”

He shook his head, still staring at the projection of Earth. “It’s fine. They probably think I’m dead, too.”

“Yeah, or else they’d be looking for you.”

The lighting cast unfamiliar shadows across Keith’s face, painting his features into bitterness. “My mother could’ve found me when I was with the Galra. She never looked for me. Which is fine. I don’t—” He breathed through his nose, hand smoothing over the hilt of his bayard. “She left me for dead. I don’t want a reunion. She’s just another Galra.”

The scorn to his words surprised Lance.

“Hey, some of you guys are okay,” he tried to soothe. “There’s Thace, and the rest of the Blade—”

Keith nodded, lips pressed together. “Yeah, Thace.” He met Lance’s eye. “You know he’d have let me leave without knowing what I was? He only told me because you asked. And he knew my whole life.”

Lance could only imagine how Keith felt, that his mentor, maybe the only person who cared about him for years, had been lying to him for so long.

“So what would you have done? If you’d known you were half human earlier?” Lance asked. He already had an idea of Keith’s answer, and he wasn’t sure if confronting Keith with it would make him feel better or worse, but he didn’t know what else to say. “Would you have left? Would you have come to Earth?”

“Like _this_?” Keith held out a plainly purple hand. “No.”

Lance nodded.

Keith frowned when he realized Lance expected him to elaborate.

“And I don’t know—with no context to what a human was…” He gestured at Lance. “Humans would’ve been just another alien race, I guess. I dunno. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. But that wasn’t Thace’s choice to make.” He crossed his arms. “I could’ve known why I was like this.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, slipping an arm around his waist.

Keith dropped his head on Lance’s shoulder and they watched Earth slowly spin for a while.

Just looking at it made Lance homesick. He used to make himself feel better by reminding himself that he was saving the universe, that Earth was in danger too, and if he couldn’t be home with his family, at least he was fighting to keep them safe.

But now? What was he doing? His team didn’t even trust him enough to help out on a diplomacy mission.

Maybe they were right. Maybe they could tell he’d done unforgivable things.

“Hey,” Keith rumbled, lifting his head. “Are you thinking about the thing?”

“What? _No_ ,” he lied. “Why?”

“You’ve got that look on your face.”

Lance tried to brush him off. “You could be looking at any planet in the universe, and you’re staring at me?”

The unease didn’t leave Keith’s face. “Are you hearing voices?”

Lance sighed hugely. “ _No_.”

He straightened out of his comfortable slouch into Lance’s side. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he said, softening his tone. “I just… I should be with the team, you know? These planets risked their lives for me, and I can’t even show up to thank them?”

“You didn’t ask them to do that,” Keith said. “And they were all rebelling, quietly, anyway. Voltron just… gave them hope that it wouldn’t be another futile fight.”

 “It still feels shitty not to thank them in person.”

Keith nodded a shrug, like he always did when he felt guilty about not having anything more comforting to offer.

“I’d have liked…” Keith trailed off.

“What?”

“I’d have liked to find out if that Sa’rasan family got away. The one I let escape.”

“I’m sure they’re safe,” Lance said, with absolutely nothing to support his reassurance.

“It would’ve been nice to find out for sure,” Keith muttered.

“So we shoulda gone.”

“No, it would’ve…”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Bad idea. What would I do there? It’s… it’s selfish of me to wanna go.”

Lance found his hand and squeezed. “No it’s not.”

 “How is it not—?” His mouth twisted. “They don’t want a Galra there, Lance. Nobody is ever gonna want—” He cut himself off with a scowl.

And that was a very real problem they’d have to deal with. But if there was one upside in not going on this mission, it was that they didn’t have to figure that out right now.

“Well, you won’t know until you try.”

“Do all humans come equipped with useless platitudes, or is it just you?” It would’ve sounded harsh, except for the soft curve of his brows and the exasperated fondness in his voice.

Lance grinned. “I keep telling you, I’m one of a kind.”

The mice scurried in, squeaking up at them.

“What?” Lance said. “You guys looked too cute sleeping in the lounge. Didn’t wanna wake you.”

They pointed out the door.

Lance crouched down. “Do we need to go? Is it lunch time?”

They nodded vigorously.

Lance stood up, reaching for Keith’s hand. “Alright, guess it’s time to eat.”

Keith was still looking at the Earth.

“We can come back later,” Lance said softly.

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The team comes back next chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you for all your lovely comments! They really keep me going!  
> Heads up there's some self-deprecating thoughts in this chap for our poor little Lance.

When the team returned, Allura wanted to know more about what Keith and Lance been up to, even though she’d video-chatted with Lance every day she was gone. So Lance gave vague answers and then demanded a debriefing of his own over dinner.

He had some vague feeling that he’d feel less guilty for not thanking the rebels who’d sacrificed their lives for him if he could at least _feel_ like he’d been there.

But the whole team was all light on the details, mostly just talking about the rebuilding efforts.

Most of the aliens had fled, some before the uprisings to escape the fighting, and some still after it was done, fearing for their families if the Galra were to return once Voltron had left.

There was something so heart-breakingly sad about that, abandoning their home—a whole _planet_ —just in case their invaders came back. Lance would’ve promised them that they’d be able to safely return some day, once Voltron took down Zarkon. He made that promise to himself anyway.

Keith slipped away at some point during the debriefing. In fact, eventually it was only Shiro, Allura, and Lance left at the dinner table.

“We’ll visit them again some other time,” Shiro finally said, after Lance had tried to squeeze every last detail out of him and Allura.

But they weren’t telling him anything useful.

Lance rose from the table, stretching his arms above his head. “Well I’m glad you guys made it back safe. I’m just gonna chill with Hunk and Pidge for a bit and then turn in early.”

Mostly a lie. He was going to herd Hunk and Pidge into the lounge and beg them for more info.

But Shiro and Allura loved hearing that he was planning to rest.

“Good idea,” Allura said with a nod.

“Yeah, get a good night’s rest,” Shiro began, “and then tomorrow, if you’re up to it, we’ll be running lion drills before we leave the planet.”

Lance perked up. “I absolutely will be up to it! See you in the morning!”

And then. And then he left the dining room and he was alone in the hallway. Which wasn’t ideal.

But it wasn’t like anything bad was going to happen. It was totally fine that flying in Blue was the longest he’d been alone for more than five minutes since he’d escaped the Galra ship.

Nothing was going to happen to him. He was just going to find his friends and corral them into the lounge to hang out. There was no reason to run through the hall, peeking into rooms as he passed looking for anybody.

He was doing it anyway.

The relief that flooded his system when he heard voices from the training room was almost embarrassing.

The doors slid open to reveal Coran and Keith, Keith looking like he was about to train and Coran in the middle of his mini history lessons.

“The red and blue paladins have always had a special bond,” Coran was saying, his back to Lance. “So if anybody was going to find the red paladin, it makes sense that it was Lance.”

“And do you believe that I’m the red paladin,” Keith said quietly, “or do you agree with the princess?”

“Those are two very distinct questions, my boy.”

Keith noticed Lance over Coran’s shoulder and nodded at him.

Coran turned, body twisting like an elastic to see Lance. “Hello, Lance! Looking for some late-night training like Keith here?”

Lance shook his head, crossing the training floor to reach them. “Just looking for Keith. But uhhh don’t let me interrupt.”

He’d never actually broached the topic of Keith with Coran, because he was scared that Coran, who was like a weird, fun uncle to him, didn’t actually want Keith in Voltron either, and was just pretending to be welcoming to keep the peace.

Which would be totally fine, just… disappointing.

“Hm?” Coran hummed, fuzzy brows lifting leisurely as he thought back to what he’d been talking about. “Oh! Right.” He laid a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “I understand Allura’s feelings completely. What the Galra have done is unforgiveable and she has every right to be opposed to having a Galra join the team.”

Lance nodded, wishing he could follow his stomach that dropped straight through the floor so he wouldn’t have to hear the rest.

“But she was barely more than a child when Zarkon betrayed us,” Coran continued, placing a hand on Keith’s shoulder as well. “And you have to understand, it feels like only a short time ago that we were on Altea. She’s had little chance to come to terms with it. Frankly, I’m impressed in her restraint thus far.”

“Restraint?” Lance repeated incredulously. “She threw Keith’s stuff in the incinerator.”

“She did _what_?” Keith said.

“Trust me,” Coran continued. “That was restraint. And agreeing to this probationary period was incredibly mature. When you first arrived, she wanted to spar with you for the right to stay.”

“Is that a bad idea?” Keith asked with worryingly little sarcasm.

Lance shot him an incredulous look before turning back to Coran. “But what about you?”

Coran smoothed down his moustache, considering.

“I trust you, Lance,” he finally said. “Which isn’t to say the others don’t trust you, of course. But I remember much more of the time before the Galra turned on us, when they were our allies, our friends! I’m still absolutely clodswackled that so many turned out this way.”

Coran shook his head, letting more distress crack through his calm façade than he’d allowed in front of Lance before.

Lance wasn’t clodswackled though, whatever that meant. As far as he could tell, Galra were raised in a culture of fear, of superiority, of thirsting for violence. The idea that Galra were right because they were powerful was instilled into them from childhood. Of course they’d take over the universe, no matter the cost. Because destroying other people, other planets—that wasn’t even seen as a horrible but unavoidable cost to the Galra, just an inconvenience.

He didn’t know what the Galra of old were like, but they’d clearly changed in the ten thousand years since Coran knew them.

Coran turned to Keith. “So it makes much more sense to me that there are still good Galra left. And if we’re going to stop Zarkon, we need a strong, cohesive Voltron, like the good old days. And if that’s what you’re willing to do, Keith, then I see no reason not to welcome you wholeheartedly to the Voltron family.”

Keith’s mouth dropped open the tiniest bit, which was basically gaping for him.

“Yes, I am, I do—thank you,” Keith finally said. He tacked on, “Lance speaks very highly of you, so that means a lot.”

Coran preened, grabbing Lance in a one-armed hug. “Well, I think very highly of Lance, so that’s high praise.”

Lance grinned. “Thanks for being so cool about it, Coran. It really does mean a lot.”

“No need to thank me, my boy,” he said, cheeks going a little pink. “Just sharing my own thoughts like always. Now, I best be off. You two have a nice night!”

Lance grinned at Keith as Coran walked off. “That’s a relief, huh?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah, he’s been really nice so far, I’d just never asked him outright. Figured he’d side with Allura.”

“Same,” he said. “So do you feel like helping me look for Hunk and Pidge, or...?” He waved at the training room, where Keith obviously had plans to be.

“Yeah, I’ll come with.”

They wandered the halls, Lance feeling a lot more settled with Keith’s steady presence at his side. It didn’t take long to find Hunk and Pidge, paused in the middle of the hallway, distracted from their original destination by some techy conversation Lance couldn’t follow.

Lance invited them all to the lounge, which would serve a dual purpose of digging for details and a getting-to-know-each-other hangout sesh, which Lance had been using to attempt to get Keith and his friends comfortable with each other. It wasn’t working as flawlessly as he hoped, but perseverance was key.

But then Keith lifted his hand. “If it’s alright, I was actually planning to train.”

“Oh, then why—” Lance cut himself off.

Right, he’d come with Lance just to _find_ Pidge and Hunk, to hand Lance off to them because Lance couldn’t stand to be alone.

But Keith could. And Keith had been forced to spend every last second of the better part of a week with Lance.

“Sure!” Lance said, voice determinedly not cracking. “Sure, that’s cool! Did you—did you want me to stay with Hunk tonight?”

“Um.” Keith snuck a peak at Pidge, who nodded encouragingly. “If you want. You don’t have to, I just—”

“Yeah, I get it,” he assured him, because Keith was squeezing his bayard hard enough to whiten his knuckles. “You deserve some time to chill. Go on.”

Keith nodded, still not looking quite certain, but he headed to back to the training room anyway.

They headed to the lounge, and Lance lifted a brow at Pidge. “Do you know something about that?”

She shrugged. “He found me hanging out by myself one time and I guess he didn’t know we were allowed to do that? Like, be alone. Which is why he never turned you down for hanging out.”

“Oh.” Something in his stomach squirmed. “He could’ve said something to me.”

“He didn’t wanna disappoint you, I guess,” Pidge said. “I told him you’d be cool with him wanting to be alone sometimes, though.”

Lance should’ve noticed sooner. Keith wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.

But Keith also could’ve _said_ something.

Keith was changing, and Lance couldn’t put his finger on why exactly—if it was because he finally had the chance to be softer, or because he was forcibly smoothing his ragged edges to fit in. Maybe a mixture of both, but definitely the latter. Lance felt every time Keith tensed during a conversation with the others, saw his teeth grind as he bit down on a comeback. He held himself tight, too nervous about making a bad impression to be himself.

And it was spilling over to when they were alone, when Keith stayed quiet rather than risking saying the wrong thing.

“Thanks,” Lance said to Pidge, worry tugging the corners of his mouth down. “My head’s so… like I can barely stand how long it takes to shower by myself—it never occurred to me he wouldn’t want to be surrounded by people at all times.”

“I’m sure he’d help you shower, too,” Pidge muttered under her breath.

Hunk snorted.

Lance shoved her shoulder. “Pidge!”

“What? Platonically! Two bros can’t _platonically—”_ she couldn’t finish without bubbling into laughter “—soap each other up?”

“You’re the worst,” Lance groaned a laugh as they reached the lounge.

They settled in, Hunk and Lance on the couch and Pidge spread on the floor, skimming through her holo-tablet.

They chatted for a bit about nothing before Lance steered the conversation back to their trip to the rebel planets.

Hunk and Pidge remained as tight-lipped as they’d been at dinner.

“Just give me something, anything,” Lance whined, leaning into Hunk’s side. “A touching story of hope? C’mon.”

“I mean, we helped some kids find their parents,” Hunk said, scratching the back of his head. “That’s kind of what I was focusing on while Shiro talked with the leaders about rebuilding efforts.”

“What about that bird girl?” Pidge said. “That’s touching, right?”

Lance popped to attention. “Bird girl? Love it already. Lay it on me.”

“Okay, okay, fine.” Hunk shifted so he was facing Lance fully. “She was on Sa’rase with her little sister looking for her girlfriend. Her girlfriend’s house was empty, and there was a bloodstain, so she thought the worst, but then a neighbour said the girlfriend and her family probably escaped on a refugee ship when the Galra were attacking.”

“So I upgraded some communicators,” Pidge said. “And got a video chat going for the two of them. She was planning to join the ship when we left.”

“See, that’s beautiful,” Lance said, feeling a little better about the situation. “What else?”

“Most of them were hopeful,” Hunk said with a shrug. “They were doing a lot of rebuilding, restructuring, planning.”

“And Krizztnup had the sickest party,” Pidge said.

“A party?”

“I mean, they called it a celebration of life, but it was technically a mass funeral—”

Lance’s face dropped.

Hunk sent Pidge a death glare.

She adjusted her glasses guiltily, muttering, “Never mind.”

Lance nodded, posture stiff.

This was what he’d wanted, right? Details.

Hunk dropped an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, man.”

Lance sunk into his chest, the tightness catching his throat refusing to dissipate despite Hunk’s embrace. “How can I not? They did that for me—”

“Nothing that happened to them is your fault,” Hunk said.

“We just wanted you back, Lance,” Pidge said quietly, not turning her bright-glassed gaze away from her screen. “We couldn’t do it without help.”

It took a moment for Lance to catch onto what she meant. He sat up in Hunk’s embrace, startled. “No, I know, I don’t—I don’t blame you—”

“So why are you blaming yourself?” She met his eye firmly. “You had nothing to do with the decision. I was the one who noticed there were resistances on all the planets in that quadrant in the first place.”

“So? That doesn’t mean—it’s not _your_ fault—”

“Then why would it be yours?”

Lance ducked his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean to make it all about me.”

“What? No, why—” She sent a desperately exasperated look at Hunk, who squeezed Lance’s shoulder in response.

“It’s fine, it’s nobody’s fault,” Hunk said soothingly. “It’s not like the Galra would’ve left after a peaceful debate. The rebels would’ve had to fight one way or another.”

Lance only allowed himself to wallow for a few more seconds before he forced himself to pull it together.

They didn't want Lance to be sad. Shiro had forbid Lance from going on this mission specifically so Lance wouldn't get worse after seeing what was left of the planets that had risked everything for his escape. And it wasn’t fair to make his friends second-guess their decisions from when they were scrambling to save him.

He plastered a smile on his face. “You're right.”

“Really?” Hunk asked suspiciously.

He nodded. “I should just be grateful.”

Not guilty, not sad and mopey. That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t what he wanted to be. He scrambled for a way to lift the mood.

He wiggled his brows at Hunk. "So, meet any cuties?"

Hunk gave him a good long look, rudely refusing to accept the conversation shift.

“No?” Lance turned to Pidge, ignoring Hunk’s overly critical concern. “Pidge? You spot any foxy alien babes?”

Pidge stared at him flatly before flicking her gaze over his shoulder.

Lance followed her eye to Keith hovering in the doorway. He grinned reflexively. “Hey, handsome. Miss me?”

Keith ducked his head, bangs failing to hide his blush. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Yeah, I've got plenty of secs for you—seconds,” he corrected when Pidge snorted.

He sent her a dirty look before following Keith into the hall. Keith was sweaty and flushed; clearly he’d gotten some good training in. Maybe he wanted Lance to join? It was a bit late for that, but Lance wouldn’t say no.

“What's up?” Lance said.

Keith tugged at his ear, not quite meeting his eye. “Uh, you know what? Never mind, it’s dumb.”

“No, c’mon.” Lance grabbed his hand before he could leave. “You know I was just joking about alien babes, right?”

Did Keith even know that’s just who Lance was? A huge flirt?

“Huh? Uh, yeah, whatever, that’s not—” He wiped his free palm against his thigh. “Are you annoyed I’m not hanging out with you guys?”

“What? No, no way,” Lance said. “I mean, you were stuck with me for days on end, no wonder you wanted some time alone—”

Keith’s mouth twisted. “That’s exactly—it’s not about you—”

“No, I get it.” Lance’s voice felt weird, strangled, coming out of his throat. He took a deep breath, forcing the hot pressure behind his eyelids to dissipate. He forced a smile. “Honestly, it’s fine. I’m sorry I didn’t think about it earlier. Obviously you don’t have to hang out with me all the time.”

Keith looked at him with a suspicious concern so similar to Hunk’s that Lance actually got annoyed that the two weren’t getting along better.

“No, it’s not—Pidge said—” Keith huffed, frustrated.

“What? You can tell me.”

Keith wasn’t big on talking at the best of times, but anything emotion-related—or god forbid anything that could upset Lance—came out of Keith even more stunted, like what Keith _really_ wanted was to screw a cap on so tightly that nothing sputtered out.

“I thought wanting to be alone was just a Galra thing, but then Pidge said it wasn’t so I thought I could “chill” or whatever,” Keith said, the foreign slang coming out with full finger quotes, which Lance had taught him. “It’s not—it’s not your fault, I mean. It’s not _you_. I like spending time with you, I’m just... tired.”

“I get it,” Lance said, more sincere, less desperate than the first time. “I wanna be alone sometimes, too, just…” He shrugged. “Not much anymore. But that’s why I like being with you, not doing anything, just, like, existing together. But whenever you wanna be _alone_ alone, just let me know. It’s totally cool.”

Keith’s expression loosened. “Really?”

He nodded. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll even sleep with Hunk tonight, and you can have a night to yourself, okay? It’s all good. Promise.”

It wasn’t his job to look after Lance. It wasn’t anybody’s job. Lance could look after himself.

Keith held out his pinky tentatively. “Pinky promise?”

_God_ , Lance wanted to kiss him.

Instead he wrapped his finger around Keith’s, giving him a smile. “Pinky promise.”

Keith smiled a little too, relief softening the sharp line of his shoulders. “Okay. Good night, then.”

“Night.”

And Lance wasn’t lying, it was fine that Keith wanted to be alone. Lance just hated that Keith got so freaked out about it.

But he was doing that to everybody—just being so selfish, begging for company, upsetting his friends by only thinking about himself. What kind of paladin was he?

He popped back to the lounge to tell Pidge and Hunk he was going to bed. They were going to turn in, too.

And Lance went to his room alone.

It felt too big and too small all at once with just him in it. He kind of wanted to leave the door open—just to remind himself there was a whole castle out there if he wanted to leave—but if anyone walked by they’d see him alone and wonder how on Earth he was managing that.

But he should be able to. Be alone. Go _one fucking night_ without clinging to a warm body like a needy octopus.

If he just took a deep breath, he’d be fine.

Because everything _was_ fine, he convinced himself as he changed into his pajamas.

He’d faced worse than a cold, lonely bed. So much worse.

He tugged the blankets up to his chin and closed his eyes. He could do this. This was a normal human thing. And he was _tired_. He could go to sleep alone. He could be self-dependent. He wasn’t a burden.

He could do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Lance seems pretty confident, but we shall see...  
> Next chapter is Keith POV :)))  
> Lemme know how you're liking it!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! It's still Sunday where I am, so this chapter is not late, just later in the day than usual. Blame the Star Wars matinee I saw.  
> As always, thank you for all your comments and kudos! They feed my soul, and even if I can't respond to every comment, know that I read and cherish all of them.  
> Heads up for hallucination/panic attack/just a stressful time. Your predictions were correct--Lance is not going to have a peaceful night alone!  
> So, without further ado: Keith POV!

Cool air passed over Keith’s back, seeping away the warmth his blanket had afforded him. He’d been trying to sleep, but it wasn’t working.

He had his room to himself. He could relax. Nobody’s nightmares to worry about except his own. No need to twist his body around Lance’s so they could both fit in the slim cot.

Not that he minded that. He actually enjoyed sleeping with Lance—and the simple touches that came with being with him. An easy arm slung around his shoulders, sides lining up solidly. Lance leading him by the hand throughout the castle. Thumbing over his ear as they both tried to sleep. Keith was starting to understand why Lance was so needy for contact.

But being around people, even Lance, all the time was just so much. He’d spent so much time alone—or at least ignored—on the prison ship that having to be _on_ all the time drained him.

Lance wasn’t here, so he didn’t have any reason to pretend he was sleeping, which half the time was the only way he actually managed it. Pretending until it was real.

Nobody to pretend for now.

Guilt still chewed at him over how long he’d left Lance alone in that cell. It ate him up like hungry nanobots gnawing through his stomach lining.

So he didn’t like leaving Lance for no good reason—Pidge accused them both of having separation anxiety, which he couldn’t argue with.

But Keith had _asked_ to be alone.

And Lance promised it was fine. He didn’t act like Keith was betraying him by abandoning him again or anything.

And Lance was staying with Hunk tonight, so it was fine.

Everything was fine.

He’d just convinced himself that this whole night wasn’t a huge experience in letting Lance down when he heard a _thump_.

Keith was on his feet in a second, bayard in his hand, still in his jeans and T-shirt because Lance hadn’t made him change into pajamas.

He paused, ears twitching as he decided whether it was an innocuous bump in the night or a danger to be investigated.

Then wheezing sobs reached him, and Keith threw himself across the hall like he’d smelled fire.

He slammed the button to open Lance’s door.

Lance waking up from nightmares was always different than when Keith did it; he’d spent years training himself to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible, even in his sleep. Lance, like everything else, did his big and loud. And heart-breaking.

Lance was curled up on the floor next to his bed, sheets tangled in his legs.

Hunk was nowhere in sight.

“Lance?”

He looked up at Keith with red eyes, breaths coming out in wheezing gasps.

Keith dropped to his knees and pushed Lance’s sweaty bangs off his forehead. “Lance, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

Lance shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“You’re okay, Lance. Where’s Hunk?”

He grabbed Keith’s wrist, eyes wide. “They’re not coming for me, Keith. They know what I did. They’re gonna leave me here.”

Keith’s chest pulsed, guilt cresting sharply.

“No, they saved you, remember?” Keith rushed out, pulling Lance to his chest. He rubbed his back soundly as Lance shook his head against his shoulder. “You’re on the castle ship, you’re safe.”

“No,” he choked out, breath hot and wet on Keith’s neck. He scrambled to get his arms around Keith, nails digging into his skin to keep him in place. “They’re gonna leave me here, find a better blue paladin—”

“ _No_ ,” Keith said, rocking him as Lance trembled in his arms. “Room lights on,” he said, leaning away just enough for Lance to see the newly lit room around him.

Lance looked around, blinking wildly as he took in the rumpled bed, overflowing closet, the dresser topped with souvenirs.

Keith cupped Lance’s wet cheeks with unsteady hands. “Look at me. You’re okay, Lance. You’re okay. Nothing’s gonna hurt you. You’re home.”

Lance turned back to Keith, finally focusing on him. “I am?”

Keith swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Yeah.”

“And you’re real?”

He nodded, dropping his forehead against Lance’s. “I’m real, and you’re real, and you’re really in the castle.”

Lance dragged in a breath, shoulders shaking, and twisted his fingers up in the back of Keith’s shirt. As if Keith was going _anywhere_ after this.

He shuffled into Keith’s lap, wet cheek sliding against his as he pressed in as close as he could get.

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance’s broken voice filled his ear.

He smoothed down his hair. “I’m here, I’ve got you, it’s okay.”

“Don’t go.”

“Never.” He waited for Lance’s breath to even out before asking, “Where’d Hunk go?”

He was warring between annoyed and shocked that Hunk would leave. Lance had stayed with Hunk before; he _knew_ how he got.

“Uh, I went to bed?” came a voice from behind him.

Keith looked over his shoulder.

Hunk stood in the open doorway next to Pidge, who tiredly slipped her glasses up her nose.

Hunk slipped into the room, wrapping an arm around Lance’s shoulders. “What happened?”

“He said he was gonna sleep with you,” Keith said, trying his very best to keep the accusation out of his tone and probably failing.

Lance started sobbing even harder than a minute ago. “I’m sorry, I—I—I—”

“Shh,” Hunk hushed him gently, shooting a questioning look at Keith.

Keith shrugged.

“Let’s get you back on the bed, huh?” Hunk said to Lance.

Lance nodded into Keith’s shoulder.

It was a tight fit for three people, but they made it work, because Lance wouldn’t let either of them go. They sat up against the headboard, Keith’s left foot braced on the floor to keep himself from rolling off the edge.

Pidge came back with a glass of water once they’d settled. Keith hadn’t even noticed she left.

“So, what?” Pidge began softly after Lance had gulped down the water. She sat on the foot on the bed. “You wanted to test if you could get through a night alone?”

Keith was surprised when Lance nodded, but also not, because the suggestion came from Pidge. She had an uncanny way of figuring stuff out, and not just tech, as Keith originally assumed.

“I should—” Lance took another breath, mostly calmed down but hands still shaking in his lap. “I should be _able_ to. I… _ugh_. I shouldn’t have to be coddled like this.” He gestured at the three of them, who’d forgone sleep to worry over him in the middle of the night.

“Why not?” Hunk tucked Lance’s head under his chin, rubbing his back.

“Because I’m not a little kid,” he muttered.

“Nobody said you were,” Hunk said.

Lance’s best friend was obviously better at this comforting thing than Keith. He felt like an intrusion more than anything else, but he couldn’t leave Lance again.

“I’m annoying everybody,” Lance said.

And that hit Keith like a punch to the gut, which was maybe why his retort came out a little snappy. “I never said you were annoying me.”

Lance wouldn’t look at him. “You didn’t have to.”

Keith gaped. “What’s that mean?”

“You were upset earlier—”

Keith grabbed his hand. “Because I thought I upset _you_ , which I obviously did—”

“No, you didn’t, because it’s fine—”

“How is this fine?” he demanded incredulously.

Hunk shot him a hard look. “Dude, lay off.”

Hunk’s presence had honestly slipped Keith’s mind for moment. But Hunk was _right_ there, watching Keith make this all about himself instead of Lance.

Keith leaned back, as unthreatening as possible.

Lance hooked his chin over Hunk’s arm to look at Keith, eyes tired and mouth a soft, sad pout. “It is fine that you wanna be alone. It _is_.”

And he’d pinky promised it was fine, but then he said he’d sleep with Hunk, and that wasn’t true either.

How was Keith supposed to believe he wasn’t hurting Lance when Lance didn’t tell him when he did?

“Why didn’t you stay with Hunk?” Keith asked

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Because I shouldn’t _have_ to.” He wiped his cheek roughly on his sleeve. His voice was small when he said, “How long am I supposed to live like this?”

Keith pressed his lips together to hide their sudden trembling.

His fault, this was _his_ fault. He should’ve rescued Lance sooner, got him out of that cell, he should’ve helped him—

Pidge broke through his spiralling thoughts. “It’s not gonna get any better any faster if you keep pushing yourself like this.”

“I know,” Lance mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be—”

“Don’t apol—”

Keith and Hunk stopped when their responses overlapped each other.

Lance snorted with subdued amusement.

Keith stroked his thumb over Lance’s knuckles. “Lance, if something I’ve done is bothering you, please tell me.”

Lance never had any problem with speaking his mind before.

And Shiro kept saying that the only way for a team to work was open and honest communication. That worked for Keith. If he was doing something wrong, he wanted to know, so he could stop it.

“Okay, but same, though,” Lance replied.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Keith was still tense. He wanted more answers, more assurances, but he didn’t have any more questions. And Hunk did not look ecstatic about the way this had been going so far.

“We’re here for you, man,” Hunk said, taking back control of the conversation, which was probably for the best. “You know how worried we were when you were gone? You’re not gonna annoy us now that we have you back.”

Lance bowed his head. “Thanks, Hunk.”

Hunk continued talking in the same vein, offering platitudes that sounded way better coming from him than they ever did from Keith. Pidge gave joking input intermittently. She seemed as uncomfortable with the comforting side of things as Keith.

It didn’t take long for both Lance and Hunk to drift off, Lance slumped onto his wide chest, mouth hanging open, eyelids puffy from crying.

“I should go,” Keith murmured to Pidge, who’d curled her small form up on the end of the bed and looked ready to pass out too.

When he first arrived, she’d put him through a barrage of questions about his half-human half-Galra state, and when he couldn’t give her many answers, she started picking his brain about Galra tech. If she was as uncomfortable with Keith as the rest of the team, she didn’t show it.

He almost offered to carry her to bed, like he’d seen Hunk do countless times, but he held back. It still seemed like a bit much.

 “It’s not your fault,” Pidge said quietly.

“What?”

“It’s not your fault you told Lance you wanted to be alone and he suddenly decided he was a nuisance,” she said. His doubt must’ve shown on his face, because she continued, “He just gets like this sometimes, where he thinks people don’t want him around. Usually gets _more_ annoying and loud, so we know to pay more attention to him. I’d prefer that over this.”

She jerked her chin at Lance, who’d forced himself out of his comfort zone because he thought his friends were getting tired of him.

“Usually—you mean like _before_ …?” Keith left his question unfinished.

Pidge nodded.

Keith looked at Lance, soft breaths of air falling from his parted lips. “How else is he different?”

After a moment of contemplation she said, “He’s smaller.”

He frowned. “I don’t remember him being that big of a guy to begin with.”

And those nutrition bars were meant to give the prisoners enough strength to fight—Lance hadn’t been malnourished, even though prisoners always ended up looking like death anyway. Keith was pretty sure Lance hadn’t lost much weight.

“No, he—” Pidge sat up, puffed out her chest, lifted her chin. “Used to act like he was king of the world, you know? Now, he’s… smaller. Like there’s less of him.”

Oh. Yeah. Keith knew what she meant.

His throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”

She lifted a brow. “What’d you do?”

“I should’ve got him out sooner.”

“Yeah, we should’ve too.” She shrugged and snagged Lance’s closest body part—his ankle. He barely twitched. “But we’ve got him back now. That’s what matters.”

Keith nodded. He was overwhelmingly relieved that every time back in the cell he’d told Lance that his friends were coming, and that they’d cared about him and missed him, he’d been right.

“You can’t change the past, you know?” Pidge continued, curling back up on the mattress. “You can only make the present better.”

And Keith was desperate to do that, any way he could.

“Just go to sleep,” she finished, eyes falling shut. “He’ll want you here when he wakes up.”

 

As soon as Lance woke up the next morning, he was back to acting like everything was fine.

That wasn’t anything new, but it was weirder having two other people there who’d witnessed the previous night’s breakdown. Instead of just Keith going along with Lance joking and smiling as if he didn’t still have tear tracks staining his cheeks, it was all three of them awkwardly nodding and pretending last night didn’t happen.

Lance slipped into the adjoining bathroom to shower. Keith dropped his head against the wall, stiff from his sleeping position and uncomfortable from everything else.

Pidge stood, cracking her neck. “I’m gonna… go get dressed, I guess. See y’all at breakfast?”

Keith nodded.

Hunk leaned against the wall. “Yup.”

Silence stretched, expanding in the space between them like the crackle of static electricity before a storm.

Hunk was always very polite to Keith. And Keith did his very best to act in kind. Hunk was Lance’s Best Friend, which seemed like a hefty title to Keith.

And Hunk did not like him.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” Hunk broke the rumbling silence. “He wasn’t in a good place last night.”

Yeah, he’d _noticed_.

“Exactly, which is why—” Keith bit down his snapped response.

Lance shouldn’t lie when stuff upset him. Keith had to be firm when Lance did stupid self-sacrificing shit.

It pissed Keith off, it _terrified_ him. Heart-pounding, mouth dry, just like when he found Lance shaking in that cell saying he’d rather die than kill another prisoner.

That hadn’t been an option, and Keith could not for a second let Lance act like it was. And if Lance was going to take a risk, he should at least give somebody a heads up.

_Right_? Was he not right?

He pulled his knees to his chest. Hunk knew Lance better than Keith, though. Maybe Keith was just making it worse.

He exhaled slowly. "Okay," he said lightly, like anything stronger than that would set Hunk off.

Hunk crossed his beefy arms. “He's gotten really attached to you.”

“Yeah,” he said, bracing for the worst.

He looked him over, big brown eyes endlessly suspicious. "What about you?"

“I’m very attached to Lance.” He thought that was apparent, but maybe he was expressing himself wrong. Maybe Hunk just thought he was lying.

“You care about him?”

He nodded, meeting Hunk’s gaze. “With everything I have.”

His brows rose, then lowered again while he chewed his lip. “Have you ever cared about someone before? Like, did you have friends? Do you miss anybody?”

Not the line of questioning Keith expected.

“I didn’t have friends,” Keith said. He considered his words, trying to be as honest as possible. Thace was the only person whose wellbeing he had any stake in, but even then… Thace was fully capable of taking care of himself. He had no reason to rely on Keith for anything. “Nobody needed me to care about them before Lance.” He cast a glance at the bathroom door. “Nobody cared about me as much as Lance did, either.”

“Lance has a big heart,” Hunk said after a moment. “He’s a good guy, always helping.”

“I know.”

He fiddled with his headband, pushing it further into his hair and then bringing it back down. “So what about when he doesn’t need you anymore?”

Keith’s response was immediate. “Then he’ll be better off.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged. “What, you don’t agree?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “I didn’t think you were… so self-aware, I guess.”

Keith had never been anything but self-aware. Too aware of himself, of what was wrong with him, what others thought of him.

Hunk thought Keith liked Lance needing him, being dependent on his company and reassurance.

Keith spoke to his knees. “I don’t—I don’t want him like this any more than you do.”

He nodded slowly, still considering a response when the water from the bathroom shut off.

Lance opened the door approximately five seconds later, so he wouldn’t be alone as he completed his skincare routine.

“So, my two favourite dudes,” Lance said, looking at the mirror while smearing lotion on his face. “We excited for lion drills today?”

“You sure you’re up for that?” Hunk asked tentatively.

“Yes. Yeah, totally!” He turned to face them, guilt drooping his features. “I—I didn’t keep you guys up too late, did I?”

“No.”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay? So—lions!”

The bedroom door slid open and Allura swept in.

“Lance.” She breezed past Keith like he wasn’t there—which she probably pretended was the truth.

Keith shut right up. That was his strategy—he kept his head down, especially around Allura. It had kept him out of trouble before. When he sunk into the walls, silent and small, insignificant enough to fade out of existence, he did fine.

Maybe Allura would tolerate Keith if he acted like he didn’t exist when she was around.

“Pidge said you were upset last night,” Allura said to Lance. “Are you alright?”

Lance groaned. “I’m _fiiine_.”

Keith nodded at him before he slipped out of the room, giving Allura exactly what she wanted.

 

After breakfast, they dispersed to suit up for their training drills.

Shiro caught Keith before he could leave the dining hall, and asked him to hang back. Keith didn’t miss that he’d waited for Allura to leave before grabbing him.

They headed in the opposite direction of Lance, Hunk and Pidge as they headed to the bridge, where Shiro had to grab something.

“So about last night—” Shiro began.

“I shouldn't have left him alone, I’m sorry.” Keith beat him to the punch.

“That was his decision, Keith,” Shiro said gently. “And he can choose to deal with this how he wants. I just wanted to know what Lance was like when you first got to him.”

“Oh.” He scratched his ear. “He was upset. He, uh, thought he was back on the prison ship.”

"Was he aggressive with you?"

“Lance? No. No, he knew it was me.”

Though, was Lance recognizing him a good enough reason to not to attack him? Keith kept expecting Lance to wake up from a nightmare and lash out at Keith, blaming him for everything.

“Was there anything else?” Shiro asked.

Keith’s palm skimmed his bayard. “No.”

Which Shiro didn’t believe, not for one second. But Keith wasn’t about to tell him that Lance had been convinced the team wasn’t coming for him.

“I can appreciate you respecting Lance’s privacy,” Shiro began as they turned a corner. “But it’s not just the two of you anymore. We’re a team, and we’re all here to support Lance. And you. But we can’t do that if you guys keep too many secrets. Do you get it?”

Keith nodded vigorously. “I do, sir. But I assure you that small details are irrelevant, and anything bigger…” Like Lance being ready to sacrifice himself to save a prisoner. “That needs to come from Lance. Please.”

Please don’t make him betray Lance’s trust like that.

Thankfully, Shiro nodded. “Obviously I’d rather talk to Lance, but he hasn’t been open to discussing things with me.” He ran a hand over his hair, expelling just a small amount of the frustration he must’ve been feeling. “And that’s fine. But if he’s not talking to me about what he’s gone through, I hope he’s talking to you.”

“You do?”

He came to a stop outside the door to the bridge. “He’s not talking to Hunk or Pidge about it, either. And you were there. You two obviously formed a bond. He needs to process what happened, and talking through it will help him.”

"Yeah?" Keith said, grasping onto anything that could help Lance. He chanced a glance at Shiro's shining mechanical arm, latched onto him without his consent. "Did talking help you?"

Shiro’s gaze immediately shuttered, the concerned crease in his brow flattening into something cold.

“Sorry, sir,” Keith said, backing off. “I shouldn’t have—that was inappropriate—”

Shiro refocused on Keith, blinking away the sudden emptiness in his gaze. “No, it’s alright.” He too looked down at his arm, flexed his metal fingers before bringing them into a loose fist. “I had memory gaps after my escape, so I didn't go through the exact same experience as Lance.”

“But you remember now?” Keith asked carefully.

He nodded, and answered Keith’s unspoken question of how he was coping. “I’ve been focusing on what’s important. This team. Voltron. Finding the red paladin, which,” he smiled, as forced as Lance’s this morning, “now we have.”

Keith squeezed his bayard’s hilt. Yeah, now they had a Galra they couldn’t get rid of who asked intrusive questions.

“I’ll talk to Lance,” he promised.

“Thank you,” Shiro said, shoulders easing just a little. “And if anything happens you don’t feel comfortable handling—if the nightmares get too much, or his hallucinations get worse, if anything gets worse, let me know, okay? Or Coran, or anybody. We look out for each other. It’s not all up to you.”

He knew that, even if he didn’t feel it.

“I understand, sir.”

“It’s _Shiro_ ,” he corrected with a small smile, genuine this time.

“Right,” he said. “Well, um, Shiro, did you have more questions, or should I go suit up?”

He patted his shoulder. “Go on ahead. I’ll meet you guys in a few.”

Lance jogged up to him as soon as Keith reached the hangar. “Was Shiro asking about me?”

“Wow, someone’s full of himself,” he tried to joke.

He gave him a _look_.

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Keith shrugged, wiping at a scuff mark on his helmet. “But if you talked to him, he wouldn’t have to ask me.”

“I don't have anything to talk about."

This time it was Keith's turn to give Lance a _look._

“You guys coming?” Hunk called from Yellow.

Lance grabbed Keith’s hand, tension melting from his face in favour of growing excitement. “Can we just train, now? Please?"

Later. Keith would make Lance talk about this later.

For now, Lance was happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So next update, if my update schedule so far is followed, is set for New Years... I'll try to have it up before then, because hopefully I'll have some sort of plans that will prohibit me from posting, but if I end up doing nothing, then you guys get to ring in the new year with a new chap, and that will also be good.  
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Lemme know what you thought!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, here we go! An update before New Years yayyy. I'm /hoping/ to start getting chaps out faster than every 2 weeks, because this is taking forever to go up, and it's all written I just need to edit, but we'll see if I can keep from getting distracted every five minutes from editing lol.

It was nice at first, the extra attention of Shiro’s daily check-ins. But Shiro kept asking if Lance wanted to talk about what happened and. Like. No. He didn’t. He’d end up crying, or having a panic attack, and all he wanted to do was move _on_.

So Lance kept brushing him off with a smile and, “It’s all good!” until Shiro caught Lance outside his room the night after his first attempt at sleeping alone.

“Hey, you okay?” Shiro asked, brows drawn tight in concern, even tighter than his usual check-ins. Possibly because Lance’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy as hell. “Do you wanna talk?”

“No,” Lance said, struggling to keep the whine out of his voice.

He leaned against the wall, already in his pajamas, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to sleep.

“Are you sure?” Shiro said. After Lance only stubbornly nodded, Shiro added gently, “I heard about what happened last night. And you don’t look—”

“I know how I look!” Lance snapped. He rubbed his eyes. “Last night was nothing.”

Which was not exactly the truth, but he didn't want to talk about his failed foray into sleeping alone.

He swore he was getting worse. His hallucinations had mostly faded, but he still got clammy hands when no one was near him, convinced that everyone had abandoned him on the empty ship, left to float aimlessly between stars because they got so tired of him they’d rather lose the ship than stay with him. Until he stumbled upon somebody and got a solid hug.

It was stressing him out.

Shiro frowned. “We can talk in your room. Or the kitchen? Hunk found something that almost tastes like hot chocolate.”

The idea of staying up late drinking hot chocolate with Shiro was tempting, except for the part about spilling his guts about his time spent in a Galra prison. _That_ part made him want to throw up.

Lance shook him off. “I don’t want to. I wanna sleep.”

“You’ve been sleeping a lot.”

“I’ve been _napping_ a lot.” Interspersed with regularly-scheduled nightmares. So this conversation was probably snippier than it had any reason to be.

“Talking about it will help—”

“Really? Dragging it all up to the surface will make me feel better? Reliving my trauma? Is that what you want?”

Shiro paused, then sighed heavily. “No, Lance.”

And he felt like shit, because Shiro got it so much worse than him, for so much longer. Lance had no reason to complain, which was another reason he wouldn’t tell Shiro about what happened.

Because it was nothing—being locked in an empty room was nothing compared to being experimented on and getting alien tech grafted to you against your will.

The door across the hall slid open. Keith’s slumped posture jerked straight when he saw it was Shiro that Lance was yelling at.

“Oh, hello s—Shiro. Hello.” He eyed Lance with concern. “Are you alright?”

“Peachy!”

Keith slid his gaze to Shiro. “Is he alright?”

Lance threw his hands up in exasperation. Keith grabbed one and tugged him through the doorway, a silent command to come to bed.

Shiro let it happen. He said to Lance, “If you ever change your mind…”

Lance threw him an a-okay sign before sliding Keith’s door closed.

He turned to Keith, looking down at their clasped hands. “You know, it’s kind of pointless to not kiss so they don’t get upset at the idea of us being in a relationship when you still hold my hand and they all know we sleep together.”

“You cuddle with everybody,” Keith replied. “And you sleep with Hunk, too. You’re handy; it’s not weird.”

“Again, that’s not what that word means.”

Keith shrugged, settling onto his bed with his bayard, which he resumed polishing.

Lance crawled onto the bed behind him and flopped down on the pillows. He watched Keith’s back, the muscles spanning under his shirt as he polished the blade that almost certainly didn’t need polishing. That didn’t stop him from playing with it every night. Lance guessed it was soothing, like a warm glass of milk before bed.

 “Hey, so,” Keith began, talking more to his sword than Lance. “I know you don’t wanna talk about last night, but if you could not put yourself in that position again without telling me, or Hunk, or somebody. I’d um, I’d appreciate it.”

“What? Going off on my own?” Lance curled into a ball. “Yeah, how stupid of me.”

He glanced at him over his shoulder. “You don’t have to lie to sleep alone, no one’s gonna stop you. It’s just…”

He shook his head and turned back to his sword.

Lance hadn’t even considered it lying but, if pressed, he supposed he’d have said that he lied about sleeping with Hunk because he expected Keith wouldn’t let him even _try_ to sleep alone.

Which would’ve turned out to be the right decision, but still.

“Just,” Keith started again, even quieter. “What if I hadn’t heard you? You’d have been all alone…”

Lance didn't like the heaviness of his tone, like he expected Lance to blame him for not being there.

“It would've been fine," Lance lied. "Maybe it would've been good for me to deal with it on my own."

Keith stilled. "Oh."

Lance liked that hollow tone even less.

"I just mean, I’ll have to handle it by myself sometime."

“Why? Isn't the whole point of having friends that you don't have to suffer alone?”

Lance tightened his arms around his knees. “It’s different. I’m too much.”

He turned around, hooking a leg on the mattress. “Nobody thinks you’re a child, Lance.”

He pulled at a stray thread on the bedsheet, pouting despite Keith’s assurance. “I’m selfish like a child. You’ve got your own shitty stuff to deal with, but you’re always reassuring me about my dumb stuff.”

Keith deactivated his bayard and tossed it onto the night table. “I don’t wanna think about my stuff, and I don’t have six other people trying to get me to, so I’m the real winner here.”

His lips twitched with a smile. His hand had barely lifted from his side before Keith’s fingers slid between his. “If it ever doesn’t feel like winning, tell me, okay?”

“As long as you let me know if I upset you,” Keith said. Lance wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Seriously, Lance.” His voice got serious. “Since when do you hold back? Since when do you not share exactly what you think of me?”

“Okay, but it’s not anything you _did_ , though,” Lance said. “Sometimes people lie to make other people feel better. Rationally, there was no reason for me to be upset about you wanting to be alone. I know that. It’s just my stupid—whatever the fuck is wrong with me.”

Keith digested that for a moment. “I still wanna know. I mean—I’m not forcing you to tell me or anything, but Shiro says—”

“I know what Shiro says. I’m not telling him about—he’s my hero, man. I’m not telling him—” He took a steadying breath. “He doesn’t need to know.”

“He went through the same thing, he’ll understand—”

“It wasn’t the same, though.” Lance’s head thudded against the wall as he tilted it back. “Keith, you didn’t see those prisoners we rescued when we stole the red lion from the Galra prison ship. They, like, worshipped him. He was the Champion. I’m… I killed innocent people.”

There was a rhythm to this conversation by now. They’d been through it a dozen times. Lance never felt any better after.

This was where Keith tried to reassure him. “You didn’t have a choice.”

This was where Lance paused, letting the unspoken argument hang. If Lance had died, the prisoners would’ve lived.

This was where Keith—oh, no, Keith straddling Lance’s waist, going off-script. His face was full of determination instead of the usual soft sympathy.

“Lance.” He cupped his cheeks, giving Lance no choice but to meet his eyes. “You know as well as I do that those prisoners wouldn’t have made it past their next battles. You wouldn’t have been saving them if you gave up. You’d just be dead along with them. If you want to keep feeling bad about it, fine, but tell somebody whose opinion you value more.”

“I… I value your opinion,” Lance said in a small voice.

“Then why do I keep repeating myself?”

Lance settled his hands on Keith’s waist. “Because I need constant reassurance that I’m not shit.” He forced his lips into a steady line, not trembling. “Sorry I’m being annoying about it.”

“What? No.” He brushed his cheekbone with a thumb and Lance’s eyes fell shut. “You’re not annoying. I just don’t know… I don’t know. I thought I was doing something wrong.”

Tears leaked from Lance’s eyes for no explicable reason. “No, you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s me.”

Keith’s bangs ghosted Lance’s forehead before his lips did. “You’re not shit, Lance.”

Every cell in his body was pounding with _Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me_.

But Keith didn’t, not on the mouth. Because they’d agreed not to.

His disappointment got swept away by the soft presses of Keith’s mouth to his temple, his cheek, the peak of his chin. Then he settled onto Lance’s chest and wrapped his arms around him as tight as possible holding him together.

Lance let his heartbeat synch with Keith’s, grounding him.

“You ever think that Shiro wants you to open up so he can, too?” Keith mumbled after a few minutes. “Will you talk if it’ll help _him_?”

And since Lance was abruptly overwhelmed by guilt that he’d been ignoring Shiro when he’d been asking for help, he said, “I guess.”

“It’s supposed to be good for you,” Keith said, like discussing past trauma was akin drinking eight glasses of water a day, and Lance should really try it.

Lance snorted a laugh into Keith’s hair, thumbing the base of his furry ear. “Okay, fine. But not now. I’m tired.”

“Tired enough to sleep?”

The alternative was sparring, which they’d been sneaking out to do in the middle of the night when lying in bed for one more second, unable to rest, became too depressing.

“I mean, I’m an optimist, so I’ll say yeah, but I dunno,” Lance said. “If you actually wanna get some sleep tonight, I can sleep with Hunk. For real.”

“Don’t.” He rubbed his cheek against Lance’s chest. “I sleep even less when you’re not here.”

“How?”

“I’ve never had my own room before. It gets too quiet without you.”

Lance hid his smile in Keith’s hair. “Aw, are the dulcet sounds of my snoring a lullaby to you?”

“Maybe. What’s a lullaby?”

“Oh, shit?” He’d never thought about it, but it made sense that Galra soldier babies were never sung to. He started humming a song his mom used to sing to him and his siblings. “ _Arrurú mi niño, arrurú mi amor. Arrurú pedazo de mi corazón_.”

Understanding crossed Keith’s face. “Oh, is that why you asked me to sing to you that time?”

Lance laughed softly. “Yeah.”

Keith blinked up at him, big eyes full of affection before he shrugged it off. “Well, Galra aren’t big on singing. I’m not sure I know any songs off by heart.”

“I’ll teach you this one, then. Are you hearing it in Spanish?”

“No?”

“Ugh, then there’s no point.” His mouth pulled to the side. “Whatever, I’ll just teach you some Beyoncé.”

 

Lance tracked Shiro down the next day and apologized for brushing him off.

“Honestly, you don’t wanna hear about it,” Lance said. “It’s just… nothing compared to what you went through.”

Wryness twisted his mouth. “Suffering isn’t a competition, Lance.”

“Yeah, but you were there for a whole year, and they took your arm, and—and nobody knew where you were, and you didn’t know if you were ever gonna get out…”

And he hadn’t killed the people he should’ve been saving.

Lance couldn’t stop thinking about the Shiro he’d hallucinated in his cell, how _angry_ he’d been, how disgusted that Lance had put his own life above an innocent prisoner. Every time he considered coming clean with Shiro, he flinched at the memory.

“You’re right,” Shiro said after a lengthy pause. “And I didn’t talk to anybody about it, even after my memories came back to me. But that doesn’t mean _you_ can’t.”

Which Lance conceptually knew, but he also really didn’t want to. But he agreed to anyway, like eating Brussel sprouts because they were “good” for him.

Shiro asked where Lance would be most comfortable talking.

Lance couldn’t think of anywhere, because his stomach was already turning in knots thinking about the hallucinated Shiro condemning him. He didn’t want anyone running into them while he was talking. The only place that really calmed him down, even when he wasn’t being hugged within an inch of his life, was his lion.

“Can we take Blue out for a spin?” Lance asked.

Shiro smiled softly. “Of course.”

So they took to the skies in Blue, her steady presence as soothing as the soft lapping of ocean waves.

She knew what he’d done—he didn’t need to tell her, she just picked up on it, like all his other memories. And she’d accepted it, just like everything else. She loved him, and that feeling was flowing straight at him as he fiddled with her controls to hold off on spilling it all to Shiro.

“Whenever you’re ready, Lance,” Shiro said after a few minutes of nothing but empty space. “Is there anything in particular you wanna talk about?”

Lance chanced a glance at Shiro, sitting on a spare seat next to him, before looking out at the sparkling stars in front of him.

“There is… something,” Lance admitted in a small voice.

He started out calm enough, explaining how he found another prisoner in the arena with him, but he broke down pretty quick describing his realization that they couldn’t both make it out alive.

At least crying in Shiro’s big, muscly arms was cathartic.

Keith was right; Shiro didn’t think Lance was some horrible monster for choosing his life over the prisoners’.

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Shiro said after Lance had stopped his awful heave-crying enough to listen. “I understand why you didn’t want to tell me, but I hope you know we’d never hold something like that against you. We’re glad you’re alive.”

Lance wiped away the tears streaming down his cheeks and nodded, even though he’d been nowhere certain of their loyalty when it happened.

“I just…” Lance coughed past a lump in his throat. “We’re supposed to be saving people. Above all else.”

Shiro rubbed his back soothingly. “You can’t save anybody if you’re dead. We need you here. The universe needs you.”

“So I get to survive because I’m more important? I’m sure that Amphlian’s family needed them.” He’d had this conversation with himself a hundred times. “What happens when all those other prisoners go home, but somebody tells that alien’s family that a paladin killed them? It’s not fair.”

He nodded. “It’s not. None of this is fair. So few of our decisions are going to be simple. But that’s why we keep fighting—so that one day things _will_ be fair for everybody we’re fighting to protect.” Lance listened, with wide, unblinking eyes as Shiro spoke. “You’re absolutely allowed to feel bad, but I don’t want you to blame yourself. And I don’t want you worrying that any of us will think worse of you, because we love you, Lance.”

His chest constricted. “I love you guys, too.”

Shiro pulled him in for another hug. “You can talk to me about anything. I don’t know if I’ll always be able to help, but I’ll listen.”

Lance nodded into his shoulder. “You can talk to me, too.” He hesitated. “Did… did they ever make you…?”

His hand stuttered rubbing Lance’s back. “I don’t remember. I’d—I’d rather know for sure, but there are still so many gaps.”

“What _do_ you remember?”

He pulled away, shaking his head. “I don’t want to burden you.”

“Am I burdening _you_?” Lance countered.

“No, no, no—” he said frantically. He stopped upon seeing Lance’s smug expression. “Alright. You got me there.”

He tugged at his white tuft of hair before running his human hand over his face.

And then he shared some stuff with Lance, but he kind of shut down, too.

With a blank face, no emotion, Shiro talked about his arm. How he had nightmares about it coming to life and killing all of them, with no way for him to stop it. The Galra had sought to make him a deadly machine, after all. He’d escaped their control, but he was a weapon anyway. And Voltron made him the most powerful weapon in the universe. Just like the Galra wanted.

“But I _have_ to,” Shiro said softly. He stared sightlessly at a random bolt on the floor. “We all—It’s our duty, our destiny now.”

It was easy to forget that Shiro hadn’t chosen this, either. That even their leader, Lance’s steadfast hero, had a different plan for his life. Kerberos was as far as he ever expected to get before he came home after a cool research mission. But the Galra had irrevocably changed his life the second they snatched him off that moon.

Shiro let out a long exhale, putting his head in his hands. “I just wanted to see the _stars_.” His voice broke on the word

Lance rubbed the wide expanse of Shiro’s back, new tears pricking at his eyes seeing Shiro break down. “I know, man. Me too.”

They’d all had much smaller dreams than saving the universe. See the stars, fly a spaceship, design tech, find family. But that’s life, right? Dreams change. Now they just wanted to go home.

They talked for a few more minutes, but pretty soon they were both emotionally wrung-out.

Shiro said something about it being dinner soon.

“Yeah.” But before Lance turned Blue back to the castle, he said, “So hey, so no one but Keith knows about the arena.”

“I can keep this to myself,” Shiro said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, like—” Lance ran a hand through his hair, deciding how to phrase his request. “It feels like lying not telling them, but I don’t want to go over it again, you know? It was hard enough this time.”

And he kept wondering which would be worse—telling them one by one, or getting it done in one go with everybody’s eyes on him.

Shiro lifted a brow. “You want me to tell them?”

“If you could just casually bring it up in conversation.” Lance shrugged. “I mean, you guys all talk about how I’m doing, right? So if it comes up, don’t hesitate to share, I guess.”

“Are you sure?”

Lance nodded. “Absolutely.”

He had no desire to see the looks on his friends’ faces as they learned what he’d done to survive.

“Alright, I can do that,” Shiro said.

“Thanks,” he said, turning Blue back to the castle.

“No problem.”

“I mean it, though,” Lance said. “Thank you.”

Shiro squeezed his shoulder. “It wasn’t so bad, right? Talking it out? We should do it more often. I think it could help. Both of us,” he added when Lance opened his mouth to brush him off.

And Lance couldn’t turn down Shiro asking for his help. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“Thanks, Lance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading! Lemme know what you thought!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! Happy New Year!  
> We're just gonna get right into it, heads up for some uhhh masturbation and mildly sexual imaginings at the beginning of this chap. Idk, I wanted to lighten things up a bit and that seemed like a good idea. Enjoy!

For the first time since Lance came back from the prison ship, he had a nice dream. Like… a Nice Dream™.

It was indistinct, just flashes, but Keith’s presence was there in the comfortable darkness of his dream—his hands roamed Lance’s body, leaving goosebumps in their wake; his mouth met Lance’s bare skin, dragging moans and gasps from his throat.

And then he woke—to Keith asleep and pressed up against his back, their legs tangled, Keith’s breath washing over his neck.

The heavy heat in Lance’s stomach only grew.

It was the first time Lance had woken up this way since he’d gotten back from the ship—or since he was on the ship. Not surprising, since nightmares weren’t exactly arousing. But he wasn’t quite sure what to do. Would Keith notice when he got out of bed? Would he be weirded out?

“Keith?” he murmured, so low he barely heard himself.

Keith didn’t react. Still totally asleep. Perfect.

No reason Lance couldn’t make this a Nice morning for himself.

Lance carefully lifted Keith’s arm off his waist and slipped out of bed. He looked back at Keith to check he hadn’t disturbed him, and smoothed out the crease that formed between Keith’s brows when Lance left his arms empty. He tucked the blanket tighter around him before slipping into the bathroom.

Keith’s scent still clung to his shirt, and his mind swam with the memory of dream Keith all over him. Lance shivered as he shucked off his pajamas.

Just a quick shower before he was back with Keith. Would be better if Keith joined him now, but…

Lance followed that line of thought once he stepped under the spray

If he could invite Keith to join him… He worked his hand over himself as he imagined open kisses under the shower stream. Wet palms slipping over exposed skin, slick with soapy water. Maybe Lance would wash Keith’s hair, massage the base of his ears, and Keith would rest his forehead against his shoulder, turning to putty in his hands.

And then Lance would sink to his knees. And Keith would groan his name—

“Lance?”

Lance yelped, flailing to cover himself as Keith poked his head into the bathroom.

“You okay?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Lance said, the word thoroughly strangled.

He cocked his head, not finding it at all awkward to just stare with those big dark eyes at Lance naked in the shower. “Are you sure?”

He gulped. “Keith, I’m—I’m fine, but you either gotta leave or join me. If you get what I’m—”

“Are you—?” His eyes grew wide. “Oh, _oh_ —whoops,” Keith finished shortly before he jerked back, letting the bathroom door slide shut.

Lance took a deep breath, willing his erection to ease. Because it was one thing to jerk off while Keith was sleeping, but now he knew exactly what Lance was doing, and he should stop, right?

He tried not to think about the sudden rosy hue to Keith’s cheeks when he realized what was going on, the way his pupils had dilated, his nostrils flared, how his gaze jumped from Lance’s crotch, away, and then back.

Lance’s hand was moving again before he’d consciously decided to continue.

But what was really the difference between now and before Keith knew what he was doing?

Not much. Nothing. It was natural!

As long as Keith didn’t think it was weird.

Was he listening from the bedroom? Was he straining to hear Lance, hoping to catch his name? Was he fighting the urge to rush in and take the situation into his own hands?

Lance groaned, long and loud, to fantasy Keith wrapping his calloused fingers around him.

He leaned against the wall, panting for a few moments before he started to get antsy being alone.

He finished up in the shower quick and opened the bathroom door as soon as he pulled his pants on.

Keith was sitting on the bed, still in his T-shirt and sweatpants, which was weird because he’d wear his paladin armour to sleep if Lance let him, and he always got dressed in his jeans and jacket as soon as he woke up to be prepared for whatever dangers that might strike them before breakfast.

“Hey,” Lance said, wiping a towel through his damp hair as he approached him.

Keith leapt from the bed, cheeks flushed red. “I’m taking a shower.”

“Oh?” Lance said, last dredges of uncertainty leaking out of him seeing Keith so wound up.

Keith slipped past him, but Lance twisted around to catch him in a backwards hug. He lined himself up against the solid line of Keith’s back, whose tense shoulders slowly eased against him. “Good morning,” he said indignantly.

“Good morning,” Keith said with a roll of his eyes.

Lance popped a kiss on his jaw. “You gonna think of me?”

“Lance!”

He laughed, releasing him as Keith flailed. Keith whirled around with a glare, but it melted from his face as Lance continued to laugh.

“Nice to see you in such a good mood.”

Lance grinned big. “Nice to be in one.”

Keith went into the bathroom and Lance turned to his closet, still smiling as he pulled out a fresh shirt.

“How long do you think you’ll be?” he called.

The door slid open again to reveal a still-blushing Keith.

“I didn’t mean—”

“It smells like you.”

Lance sniffed the air. All he smelled was the faint trace of soap and humid shower air. “What do you mean?”

He crossed his arms. “Sweat and… hormones.”

He put two and two together. “ _Sex_? It smells like sex to you? Wait, so what’s the problem—you can’t jerk off?”

“I wasn’t _going_ to—”

“Liar.” A different line of thought struck him. “Um—this is probably TMI, but have we got the same… bits?”

“TMI?” Then his brows rose dangerously high. “ _Bits_?”

Lance tugged his shirt on. “Too much information. I don’t mean to pry, but, like, I’ve never seen a Galra’s junk before—”

He sent him a withering look. “How do you think a human and a Galra reproduced without compatible reproductive systems?”

Lance lifted his hand in a shrug. “How in-depth do you think I’ve thought about your parents’ sex life, dude?”

Keith held his unimpressed glare for one more moment before his lips twisted into amusement. “Yes, Lance, we have the same bits,” he finally said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m in a _state_ , so I’m going to shower in my own room—”

“Hey, wait a sec,” Lance said. He followed him across the hall to Keith’s room. “What’d you do back on the Galra ship? When you were in a ‘state’?”

He shrugged. “I just… tried not to.”

“Seriously? No wonder you were so grumpy.”

“I was not grumpy—” His ears flicked flat at Lance’s shit-eating grin. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

And, shit, Lance wanted to kiss him. He wanted to kiss him, nice and easy, whenever he wanted, just because.

Instead, he asked. “What was the whole romance deal there?”

“Not encouraged?” Keith tugged off his shirt before tossing it down the laundry chute. “Physical stuff happened, I guess, but soldiers are raised to fight, not form long-lasting emotional bonds.”

Which was so bleak that a familiar wave of relief passed through Lance, reminding him how glad he was that he’d gotten Keith away from that life of loneliness.

“Can I shower now?” Keith asked.

Lance wiggled his eyebrows at him. “You sure you don’t want me to join you?”

The bathroom door hissed behind him, almost covering up his muttered response of, “Don’t tempt me.”

Lance smirked, turning to wait on Keith’s bed, when he saw the papers tacked to the wall above his dresser.

One of them was the alphabet Lance had written out for him, along with their names and his drawings. But there was another of Pidge and Hunk’s names and sketch portraits, and with Coran and Shiro, all obviously written and drawn by each of them.

A swell of affection rose in Lance. For Keith, and for his friends. Had Keith showed them Lance’s drawings and they’d followed suit? Or had Keith specifically asked them to draw themselves so he’d know which names went with who?

Either way, his grin grew bigger.

A knock sounded on the door.

It was Pidge. “We’re gonna have a chill day today,” she said, as if every day since he’d got back wasn’t intentionally chill for Lance. “So you guys should come by the lounge after breakfast.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He gestured at the drawings on the wall. “Also, this is cute.”

She hung off the doorway to look before rolling her eyes. “Oh my god, he was so weird about it. Like he just asked us to write our name on paper and we were like ???” She lifted her shoulders in exaggerated confusion. “And then he explained how you tried and failed to teach him to read English.”

“Do you know if he asked Allura?” Lance asked. “You wrote Coran’s name in English, right?”

Beside Coran’s name was also some scribble that he assumed was Coran’s name in Altean.

Pidge nodded. “Coran mentioned it to her. She thought it was creepy.”

“Creepy? How?” He pouted. “It’s adorable.”

“She said something about how he was gathering intel about us like a spy would, and he’s gonna turn on us, blah blah blah.” She waved a dismissive hand.

Lance frowned.

Keith came out of the bathroom in just his jeans. He froze when he saw Pidge, a flush creeping up his bare chest. “Oh. Hey.”

“Have a nice shower?” Lance asked lightly.

Keith shot him a dagger-sharp glare.

Pidge nodded at him in greeting, purposely ignoring their exchange. “So, lounge after breakfast?” she said, looking between them both for confirmation.

“I was gonna train,” Keith said.

Lance shrugged easily. “You can come when you’re done, then.”

“Can’t you train _later_?” Pidge whined at Keith.

Lance lifted a brow. “Why? What’s up?”

She straightened, adjusting her glasses mysteriously. “I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

“Ooh, a surprise?” Lance guessed, clapping his hands together. “Then we’ll be there.”

 

“I’m just feeling good,” Lance was saying to Keith as they headed to the lounge. “I guess talking it out really helped—maybe I wasn’t even that messed up in the first place!”

Keith hummed. “Well, I don’t know about that, but I’m glad you’re feeling happier.”

He threw an arm around his shoulders. “I really am, dude. I think I’m finally coming out on the other side of this, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, all that jazz.”

He cut him a look. “You realize you’ve been saying how great you’ve been doing this whole time, right?”

Lance hip-bumped him as they turned a corner. “Yeah, but this time I mean it.”

“Right. Though I do wonder if it’s not just the after-effects from the endorphins—”

“No, no. See, I was feeling this good when I woke up. I’m cured.”

His scepticism didn’t curb the smile spreading across his lips. “Okay.”

Lance might’ve tried to further convince him, but they’d reached the lounge, and they were met with quite a sight.

Spread across the coffee table was a variety of goop in jars, as well as salty snacks. Hunk and Pidge, decked out in plush bathrobes and pajamas, both looked up expectantly when the two walked in.

Lance’s face lit up.

“Um, we haven’t had a spa day since you were gone,” Hunk said, lifting a shoulder. He looked at Keith before turning back to Lance. “I thought we could all get some bonding time in.”

Lance shot him a grateful grin. “Great idea, man.”

Hunk tossed spare robe at Lance, but froze halfway through offering another to Keith, a stricken expression crossing his face. “I’m just now realizing that this probably doesn’t interest you in the slightest.”

Keith took the robe hesitantly. “No, I mean—I’ll try whatever this is.”

They slipped on their robes, and Lance tugged Keith onto the couch beside Hunk. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

Keith picked up the nearest jar and sniffed it, nose wrinkling. “Is this—is this some sort of your candy?”

“No, no, don’t eat that,” Lance laughed. He dipped two fingers into the jar Keith was holding and smeared it across Keith’s cheek.

The indignant squawk that escaped his lips sent Pidge into a fit of laughter.

Lance applied more of the goop, grinning as a pink blush spread across Keith’s skin. “It’s a face mask. It exfoliates, moisturizes, tightens—I’m not actually sure what most of these do specifically because I can’t read Altean, but I’m sure it’s good for you.”

Keith glanced at Pidge and Hunk, who were applying it to their own faces, as if to make sure Lance wasn’t pulling one over on him. “Like your face wash stuff?”

“Yup.” Lance slapped some on his own face to make his point. “It’s relaxing.”

Keith rubbed a dab of it between his fingers experimentally. “If you say so.”

“It’s getting in your hair.” Pidge grabbed a cloth headband off the table and tossed it at Keith. “Put that on.”

He did so, following Pidge’s example and pushing his bangs out of his eyes.

Lance sighed.

“What?”

“You’re so cute.”

Keith frowned, but it was more of a pout, and slapped some face goop onto Lance’s face in retaliation.

Before Lance could retaliate with a goop fight, Coran walked in, clapping his hands excitedly at the scene. “Oh, an Earth spa experience? May I join?”

“Of course!”

Coran wriggled into a spare robe and plopped onto a free seat. “Isn’t it fascinating learning about human culture, Keith?”

He nodded, looking over the jars scattered across the table. “Isn’t this all Altean materials, though? Didn’t you do this as well?”

“Sure, but we never made it a social experience. With food!” He tossed back a handful of crunchy snacks that almost resembled potato chips. “An amazingly social species. Has Lance told you they celebrate the day of their birth every deca-phoeb?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah. I think it would get really boring, but Lance swears it’s fun.”

“It’s fun!”

Keith cut a fond look at Lance before he continued his conversation with Coran. “Have you heard about pinky promises?”

Coran leaned forward. “No, tell me more.”

As they bonded over human quirks, Lance lifted his eyebrows at Hunk meaningfully.

Hunk nodded, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. He’s not so scary, I get it.”

Lance held out a fist for him to bump. “Thanks for doing this, man.”

Before Hunk could respond, Pidge shoved a handful of chips into her mouth, probably eating some of her face mask in the process. “What’d you need Keith to pinky promise for?”

“To bring me a blanket,” Lance said casually, not at all foreseeing the fallout from that one tiny comment.

“You didn’t have a blanket?”

Lance laughed. “I didn’t have a _bed_ , Hunk.”

Hunk stilled.

Lance realized a second too late that was the wrong way to say it. He probably shouldn’t have said it at all.

Abort, abort. How do you delete a verbal conversation?

 Hunk struggled to keep his expression neutral, but his brows still rose to his hairline. “No bed,” he said evenly. “Right. But Keith was gracious enough to bring you a blanket. That was… nice, so nice of him.”

Keith looked away from Coran, expression closing off as he tuned into the conversation at hand.

“Some witch forbid him from seeing me at all,” Lance said, jumping to his defense. “He was risking his life every time he came to see me.”

“Uh huh, uh huh.” Hunk crossed his legs and settled his chin onto his hand before he nodded at Keith. “I’ve been wondering exactly how you got into his cell so many times. Were you just _that_ good at sneaking around?”

Keith adjusted his headband off his ears, then he spoke stiltedly. “I thought I was, but actually Thace—the, uh, my contact at the Blade of Marmora—it turned out he always let me sneak past.” Before Hunk could ask why, he rushed on with, “I guess he figured that if anybody could convince me to change, it would be a human.”

Lance smiled at Hunk, hoping to lead him away from grilling Keith. He could still salvage this good mood. “Luckily I’m super charming, so it didn’t take long.”

“Yeah, that’s great,” Hunk said shortly.

He took a breath, centering himself, while Lance prayed that would be the end of it.

Pidge pulled an awkward face before loudly breaking the silence with, “So how about these chips, huh? They sure are something! We should call them I Can’t Believe It’s Not Chips!”

 Hunk ducked his head closer to Lance, though he was nowhere quiet enough to even pretend Keith couldn’t hear. “Is giving you a blanket what you meant when you said he was _nice_? Because I’m not sure how that kindness translates to outside of being held captive.”

Lance glared at him, to which Hunk spread his palms and said, “I’m just saying.”

“Does saving my life count as nice?” Lance retorted. “C’mon dude, you said you were gonna give him a chance.”

“You didn’t even have a _blanket_ ,” Hunk stressed, getting loud enough that the rest of them couldn’t pretend not to listen. “And you were in there for months. How could he just leave you like that?”

“It wasn’t Keith’s job to rescue me. You can’t blame him for not doing more when he could’ve been killed if he was caught.”

_Stop talking, please stop arguing, let this go_ , he begged silently. Why couldn’t he have just one good day?

“But you were all alone,” Hunk said.

“That wasn’t Keith’s fault,” Lance snapped. “He was _there_ , which was better than nothing, I’d have died with _nothing_ , so maybe—”

“Lance,” Pidge said quietly.

“—you could stop picking on him for stuff that was out of his control—”

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith cut in.

Lance looked at him, shrugging widely because _what?_ If Lance didn’t hold it against Keith for not helping him sooner, then Hunk sure didn’t have any right to. Lance thought Hunk had decided to give Keith a chance, why’d he have to do this?

Keith jerked his chin back at Hunk, who had left the couch and was swiftly heading for the door.

Lance scrambled to follow, wiping his face mask off with a towel. “Hunk? Buddy?”

He didn’t have to look far once he reached the hall. Hunk wrapped him up in a hug as soon as he stepped out of the room.

“I’m sorry.” He was muffled by Lance’s shoulder, but Lance could still hear how choked up he was. “We should’ve come sooner.”

Lance’s stomach dropped. “Oh, no, Hunk—”

“You shouldn’t have gotten captured in the first place. We were supposed to stick together—”

Lance shook his head, throat closing up remembering the Galra first capturing him—the breathless hope that his team would save him before he got too far, and the sinking, hollow feeling when it became evident that they couldn’t.

“And then you were all _alone_.” Hunk’s voice broke. He pulled back to look Lance in the eye. A chunk of face mask that hadn’t ended up on Lance’s robe slid off Hunk’s chin and splattered on the floor. “Lance, I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said in a small, shocked voice.

It had never occurred to him that Hunk would blame himself for what happened.

Hunk went on. “And Shiro just told us about—about what went on in the battle arena. And—I just love you so much.” He pulled him into another hug, tighter than the first.

 “I love you too, man.” Lance squeezed his pulsing eyes shut, but tears leaked out anyway. He took a breath, making sure that his voice wouldn’t break when he spoke again. “Keith really helped me through that, back on the ship, though. When I say he helped me, I mean he convinced me to keep going, y’know?”

“How would I know that?” Hunk asked, shaking his head. “You haven’t told me anything—and I’m not blaming you, I’ve tried not to push, but… it feels like we’re ignoring that we let you down if we don’t.”

Lance jerked back to meet his gaze. “You didn’t let me down, Hunk. Not ever.”

“I should’ve been there.”

No. At least with just Lance captured, he knew the rest of his team was safe. He wouldn’t have wanted anybody else suffering with him.

“Why, so they could’ve tortured both of us? No,” Lance insisted. He squeezed Hunk’s arm. “You’re here now. And you got me out. You have nothing to feel bad about. Seriously, I don’t blame you for anything.”

The smile that spread across Hunk’s lips was more than a little wobbly. “I’m sorry for how I’ve been treating Keith, though. I just didn’t expect—I thought we’d rescue you and everything would go back to normal, but now we’ve got a Galra on the team, and you’re… recovering. I just can’t stop worrying about you.”

And why _wouldn’t_ Hunk be worried about him? Lance hadn’t exactly been the perfect picture of mental health lately.

“I’m dealing,” Lance said, trying to convince himself as much as Hunk. “I finally talked to Shiro, you know.”

“Yeah. You can talk to me, too,” Hunk said softly.

Lance nodded. He could talk to anybody on the ship, and they’d all lend a sympathetic ear, but all he wanted to do was move _forward_. If he just kept his head down and ran at top speed away from his problems, they’d go away, right?

“Even though I get why you wouldn’t want to, with how I’ve been with Keith,” Hunk added.

“You’ve been nothing but polite to Keith,” he said tiredly.

Which didn’t necessarily mean friendly or welcoming, but Lance couldn’t complain when Allura made every room she shared with Keith ten degrees colder with her frosty glares.

“Yeah, but he means a lot to you, and there’s nothing wrong with him.” Hunk scratched the back of his neck. “I know he cares about you, for real. It’s just hard—I’m just trying to look out for you.”

“I know. But I really appreciate you giving him a chance with this—” He waved back at the lounge and the little spa day Lance had ruined. “It means a lot.”

“It wasn’t supposed to end up with us crying in the hallway, I promise,” he said with a laugh. “I found some Altean board games and movies that I’m pretty sure I understand, I made cookies, I had a whole day planned.

“Then let’s get back to it, huh? I think we deserve a chill day.”

“You got it, dude.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Next chap is p short, so I'm gonna try to have it up sooner than 2 weeks from now??? But we'll see how life goes.   
> Lemme know what you thought!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, here we are! As always, thank you for your feedback!! It sustains me.  
> The pacing of this chapter is uhh not great, but rather than fiddling with it, I figured I'd just post it so we can get to the good stuff in the next chapters. I feel like all the interesting stuff happens in the last half of this fic (poor planning on my part, but too late now), so I can't wait to get to all that!  
> Enjoy!

The tightness in Lance’s chest eased over the next week now that Hunk and Keith were finally getting along. It felt like everything was falling into place—except for Allura. And Lance was hoping Keith’s first sort-of mission would sway her opinion.

Allura wasn’t thrilled with Keith’s involvement, but it was a quick recon mission to a Galra security base, so Keith would help them get in and out even faster. Pidge went as the resident techie and Shiro, as far as Lance could figure, went to supervise while the rest of them hung back at the castle.

It should’ve been a relatively low-key assignment, so when Allura said the castle received a transmission requesting medical aid on return, Lance grabbed the platter of cookies he and Hunk had made off the kitchen counter and followed her to the hangar, Hunk close behind.

“What happened?” Lance asked.

Allura cast a cool side eye. “What do you think?”

“Did they _say_ Keith did something, or are you just assuming?” Lance asked, taking long strides to match hers. “Because you know what they say about assuming—”

Hunk reeled him back. “I’m sure it’s fine. They said medical aid, not a pod, right? Maybe Shiro just got a rash.”

Shiro had not gotten a rash.

Green landed in the hangar right about the time the three of them made it there.

Pidge came down the ramp with her forehead busted up and bleeding. Keith followed, chin ducked.

Allura gasped, rushing ahead to drag Pidge away from Keith and cradle her to her chest. “What did he do?”

“It wasn’t Keith,” Pidge grumbled into Allura’s dress. “I should’ve been paying attention.”

“No, Keith should’ve been there,” Shiro said pointedly.

Coran showed up with bandages and disinfectant and got to work on Pidge’s wound. Once the blood got cleaned up, the cut didn’t look all that bad.

But.

Keith wouldn’t meet Lance’s eye.

Shiro folded his arms like a disappointed parent. “Tell them what happened, Keith.”

Keith tucked his hands behind his back. He spoke carefully, mutedly. “I was assigned lookout while Pidge searched the Galra systems for intel. A couple guards walked by the room talking about Lotor, so I followed them, leaving Pidge open to attack.”

Lance’s interest piqued. “Is Lotor alive?”

Shiro shot him a look. “ _Not_ the point, Lance.”

Pidge huffed, pulling out of Allura’s embrace. “It’s fine, I should’ve—”

“You trusted Keith to have your back and he didn’t,” Shiro said with finality. “It’s not your fault you weren’t paying attention when that was Keith’s responsibility.”

“There, see?” Allura insisted heatedly. “Probationary period over. It’s done. Send him off.”

Shiro rubbed a hand over his face. “Allura—”

“No, c’mon, tell it right!” Pidge said to Keith. “You told me you were gonna investigate something, I forgot that the second you left the room, so a guard snuck up on me. But you came back as soon as I called for backup.” She waved Coran and his bandages away. “And I’m fine. It’s a _scratch_.”

“It’s not fine,” Allura argued. She glared at Shiro, gesturing at Pidge as she continued, “Look at what happens when somebody puts their faith in him.”

Lance’s temper rose, because it was a _mistake_ , everybody makes mistakes, that was no reason to throw him under the bus.

But Keith just said quietly, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Shiro opened his mouth, probably to lecture him further about teamwork and responsibility, but then Shiro finally took a good look at Keith.

Maybe he noticed that Keith was frozen like a rabbit in front of a wolf, because Shiro’s tone softened; still disappointed but not as hard. “I don’t think it will. Still, no more training with the simulator for you. And we’ll do more group exercises so you get more used to looking out for your teammates.”

“I understand.” Keith chanced a peek at Shiro. “Is—is that all?”

“Yes. Just focus on the mission at hand next time.”

He nodded, one quick jerk of his head. “I will.”

Allura hissed something to Coran, who shook his head.

“So, anyway.” Hunk nudged Lance, who thrust the platter of cookies out. “Congrats on your first mission.”

Keith took the tray and immediately passed it to Pidge.

“Ooh!” She grinned. “Space chocolate chip!”

 

Keith was tightly wound the rest of the day, quiet and oddly still. It reminded Lance of how you’re supposed to freeze in place when a T-rex caught sight of you. Like Keith thought if he didn’t attract anyone’s attention, he wouldn’t get ripped to shreds.

Lance tugged Keith to a stop on the way to dinner. “Hey, it’s fine.”

Keith leaned against the wall, shoulders tight. Lance took Keith’s fist and slowly unclenched it so Lance could weave their fingers together.

“You can feel bad but you don’t have to, okay?” Lance murmured, ducking his head to try to catch Keith’s eye. “You’re not going anywhere, and nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

He’d said the same sort of thing a few times already. Maybe this time it would sink in.

“Okay,” Keith muttered.

Maybe not.

Hunk and Pidge rounded the corner, and Keith tugged his hand out of Lance’s.

“I’m not hungry, can I skip dinner?”

“Yeah. Yeah, whatever you want, Keith,” Lance said gently. “I’ll see you later.”

Keith nodded and drifted off in the opposite direction of Hunk and Pidge.

When Lance told the team that Keith wouldn’t be joining them for dinner, Allura had the grace not to say anything about it being just like old times, but she did fawn over Pidge more than strictly necessary for one little scratch.

 

Lance, Pidge and Hunk wound up in the lab after, as per usual.

“Can you tell Keith no hard feelings?” Pidge gestured at her bandage. “Honestly, I’ve always wanted a cool scar. And he came back in time to help me out. It’s not a big deal.”

“I will. He just… expects a lot from himself.” Lance pushed a few half-finished gadgets to the center of the work table. He leaned his elbows on the cleared space with a huff. “Plus, y’know, his punishments growing up were basically child abuse, so I think he feels safer hiding out for now.”

Pidge blanched. “Oh, right. Shit.”

“You told him he doesn’t have to worry about that, right?” Hunk asked.

“Yeah, of course.” His concern made Lance smile, though it quickly faded. “It’s getting late, though. I should probably check on him.”

Pidge slid off her stool. “Let me try. Do you know where he’d be?”

“Red,” he said, without a shadow of a doubt. If he wasn’t with Lance, and he wasn’t training, Keith was with Red. One time he _thought_ Keith wasn’t with her because he couldn’t see Keith in the cockpit, but he’d actually hidden out below deck.

She nodded. “Should’ve guessed.”

He ruffled her hair as she passed. “Thanks, Pidge. And thanks for agreeing to go out with him today.”

“Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?” She winked at him. “He’s part of the team.”

He grabbed her in a hug on her way out, letting her now how much her support meant to him.

He slumped against the worktable again once she left. He’d really been hoping that by the end of the day Allura would be one step closer to accepting Keith, too. Instead she had even more ammunition not to trust him.

After a few minutes, Hunk looked up from the wiring he was tugging at. “What’s up, buddy?”

Lance sighed. “I just… really wanted Keith to do a good job. Or, like, an _adequate_ job. I… for some reason I thought this couldn’t possibly get any worse. And it did.” He looked at Hunk with a frown. “What if this probation thing doesn’t work?”

His brows knit. “Seriously?”

“What? How much longer is Allura going to let this happen? She was beyond pissed when Shiro wouldn’t boot Keith out today.”

Hunk looked at him for a long moment before he checked over his shoulder. He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Don’t tell Allura I told you this?”

Lance nodded, leaning forward as well.

“We need Keith, and Allura knows it,” Hunk said. “She knows the probation is just to placate her, too. Unless he turns out to be a sleeper agent or something, we’re not getting rid of our red paladin now that we have him.”

Which was exactly the reassurance Lance needed, but, “She still doesn’t like him.”

“That’s gonna take some time,” he said reasonably.

But it was taking so _long_. And Lance wanted to kiss Keith so badly.

Lance tapped out an anxious rhythm on tabletop before saying, “You know how you told me to not dive right into dating Keith?”

Sceptically, Hunk replied, “Yes. Did you take that advice?”

“Yes!” Hunk lifted a brow. Lance added hastily, “And also Keith didn’t want to piss anybody off by getting involved when you were all so suspicious of him, so we decided to, like, wait until everybody accepted him.”

He pulled a face. “What? Why?”

Lance threw his hands in the air. “You told me to wait!”

“For the sake of your mental health, not because you were worried about what we thought,” Hunk said. He shook his head, half-laughing. “What’s the point of—what? Not making out? When you’re draped over each other all the time anyway?”

He crossed his arms. “That’s also for my mental health. If I go more than five minutes without physical contact, I think I’ll die.”

Hunk rolled his eyes before taking Lance’s face in his big hands. “Lance, you’re ridiculous. Just kiss him—if you want to, if you’re both ready. Because waiting on Allura… could take a while. And I want you to be happy.”

“I am.”

And the more he said it, the less it was him desperately convincing himself. It was the truth most of the time; Lance was happy.

And he’d be happ _ier_ , sure, if he and Keith were together. But that wouldn’t fix the problem of Allura hating Keith, and the stark awkwardness between her and Lance, cracking the team apart. Arguably, that would make it worse, into something completely unfixable. Allura was part of the team, too—a pretty crucial part.

Hunk squeezed his cheeks before letting go. “Just think about it, man.”

“I will.”

But now was _not_ the time to talk to Keith about it.

The thing was, Keith wasn’t great at hiding his feelings. Like you’d kind of assume, growing up a soldier and his overall gruffness, that Keith could bottle everything up and act like nothing bothered him.

But Keith was still quiet when they settled in for the night, no eye contact, rigid in Lance’s arms as they laid in bed. And he was obviously not alright.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Lance said quietly. Keith was tucked into his side, small as he could be, head on Lance’s chest. “Pidge talked to you, right?”

He hummed, more an acknowledgement of hearing him than a response.

Lance thumbed the back of Keith’s furry ear, worrying quietly to himself.

He was sure they’d have to tire themselves out on the training deck before either of them fell asleep, but after an hour or so Keith’s breathing finally evened out, his limbs loosened, and he drifted off.

If Allura could see him like this, vulnerable and soft, would she think any differently of him? Or would she think this was a trick, too? Just a way to lull them into a false sense of security? Would she think he was deceiving them even in his sleep?

Keith’s breathing skipped, impossible to miss lying on Lance’s chest like he was.

Then his breath came out in pants, incredibly loud in the small room.

Lance squeezed his shoulder, trying gently to wake him up. “Keith?”

His eyes snapped open, gleaming gold in the darkness.

He stroked his back. “Did you have a night—?”

Between one blink and the next, Keith was on top of him. His nails bit into Lance’s wrists, pinning him to the mattress. His chest heaved, fangs bared, eyes yellow and void.

A trembling whisper, “Keith?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! Next chapter Keith POV! And it is the angstiest chapter of all. (No one gets hurt, just to ease your mind after this ending lol)  
> But uhhh yeah I'll try to get that out next weekend, and comments will def encourage me. So lemme know what you thought!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! I know, I'm so mean for that cliffhanger lmao--but here is the next chapter to (hopefully) soothe that wound.  
> Heads up for some aaaangst. Anxiety/panic/guilt attack and non-descriptive mentions of Keith's childhood as child abuse.

Smothering darkness. Haunting silence. Panic clawing up Keith’s throat like a monster trying to escape him.

Keith gasped for breath to calm himself, but composure wasn’t coming. He didn’t know where he was. He was trapped. He was going to die.

 _Stop_.

He had not been trained to panic.

And that was it. Training, this had to be another training exercise. Preparation if he was ever captured.

Or _had_ he been captured?

Or was this a punishment?

Keith’s memories flickered like a fading flame. Who had put him in this darkness? Should he be planning an escape or accepting his fate?

A dull coldness welled in his stomach as he got a vague memory of doing something wrong, of messing up a mission.

He was here on purpose, wasn’t he? Guilt filled his lungs, blocking his breath. Or was that water? Was he drowning? Was he dying?

What had he _done_? Who had he disappointed?

He’d be better, he’d do better. He could make up for it—

Something grabbed his shoulders, a tight grip dragging him down.

He bit down a startled cry.

Fight or flight, his instincts screamed. Victory or death.

Keith wasn’t restrained, which was a mistake. Sight would be helpful, but he could kill just as easily in this unforgiving darkness.

He threw himself at his attacker, squeezing whatever body part he could reach.

“Keith? Keith! It’s me, it’s Lance. Buddy—”

In a blink, his surroundings changed.

The room was dark and still, the way only nighttime in the vastness of space could be. The sole sound beyond the blood rushing past his ears was Lance’s words, too calm when Keith was pinning him to the mattress by his wrists.

Keith flung himself back, hitting the floor with a thump. He scrambled across the room, throat closing, hands shaking.

No, no, _no_. Not Lance, Keith couldn’t—leave, he had to leave—

He leapt to his feet, but he was rooted to the spot.

Not Lance, he couldn’t leave Lance alone.

He froze, chest heaving as he stood in the middle of the room. Body pulled taut, arching toward the door.

“I—I—I—” Sobs caught his throat.

Lance, he’d put his hands on _Lance_.

Horror rose like nausea in his stomach.

“Keith?” Worried, startled, scared.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’msorryI’msorry—” Nothing else was filtering through his brain, it spilled out of his mouth like water because what else was there to say?

“I’m fine,” Lance said with a breath of something like relief.

Keith’s head snapped up to look at him. Lance was holding out a hand, face open and concerned and still trying to put himself in harm’s way and get closer to Keith.

“ _Are_ you?” Keith asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

He could’ve killed him.

“Lemme get Hunk,” Keith choked out, desperate to leave Lance safe.

Lance shook his head. “It’s fine, just stay with me. Please.”

A strangled sob escaped Keith’s throat. How could Lance want anything to do with him?

Because Allura was right—Keith had tricked Lance into trusting him when he was his most vulnerable. This wasn’t friendship, this was coercion, and Keith was going to ruin him. He’d never learned how to do anything else.

Lance sat up on his knees. “Keith, just breathe.”

Was he not? He was trying to, but his lungs still burned like he was drowning; he hadn’t cried this hard since he was a child.

“Keith,” Lance repeated. “It was a nightmare, right? It’s okay.”

But this wasn’t about Keith.

Keith dropped down next to the bed, avoiding Lance’s eye. The floor was cold and unforgiving against his knees, grounding him in this inescapable reality.

“Lemme see,” Keith murmured.

Lance moved his hands into Keith’s line of vision. His wrists were red. His skin would bruise with the outline of Keith’s fingers.

“I’m tougher than I look,” Lance said. “And I already look _real_ tough to begin with, so…”

He closed his eyes. “I hurt you.”

“It was a nightmare.” He brushed Keith’s wet cheeks, but Keith flinched, rearing back on his haunches.

“ _Don’t_.” His voice cracked. “I can’t—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I can’t do this.”

“I’ve lashed out at you too, before I can fully wake up. It’s not a big deal.”

Lance didn’t get it.

Keith looked up at him. Lance’s lips were tugged down in a soft frown, and concern creased his brow—more tender than Keith deserved.

“You’re not Galra,” Keith said. He curled in on himself, ears flicking down. “You trusted me—Shiro trusted me, Pidge trusted me, and just—just look what happens.”

He tucked his trembling chin against his chest. If he couldn’t leave, he just wanted to be small, invisible, so he couldn’t hurt anybody.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Lance said gently. “It’s part of being human. And so are nightmares after trauma—”

“I haven’t had any trauma.”

“ _Keith_ ,” he said with a tired exasperation. “How many times do I have to tell you your childhood was a shit show?”

“It was just training.”

“It was child abuse.”

Keith shook his head. Every Galra soldier was raised like that. It made you tough. It wasn’t supposed to make you _weak_ and unpredictable.

“Look, I don’t know if it’s normal for Galra physiology to just accept it,” Lance continued. “But you’re half-human, so you’re processing it like a human.”

Keith wiped the tears, now cold, off his face. “It was nothing.”

Lance leaned in close, forcing Keith to meet him eye.

“That’s what I keep saying too, but can I tell you a secret?” He paused, waiting for Keith to nod. He did, and Lance said, hushed, “It wasn’t nothing. I thought I was going to die every single second I was on that ship.”

He brought his hand up to touch Keith again. Keith leaned away, like a polarized magnet.

Keith had left him in that cell, it was his fault—

Lance curled his fingers and dropped his hand. “Except when you were there, sometimes I forgot to be scared.” He pressed his lips together. “I keep telling you, I wouldn’t have made it without you. And I was alone a _month_. You’ve been alone—lonely—your whole life.”

His eyes fell on Lance’s reddened wrists. “That’s not an excuse.”

He sighed. “Keith, why are you on the floor?”

The question brought attention to his calves, burning from the prolonged position. His knees ached on the unyielding floor.

“I hurt you.”

“Barely. And _still_ —so?”

“So I don’t deserve… the bed,” he trailed off in a mumble as Lance’s expression changed to something mixed between pitying and exasperated.

“Please come up here and sit with me.”

He rubbed his ear. “I hurt Pidge, too.”

“And you think either of us want you punishing yourself for a mistake? Come _on_.”

And Keith could never really say no to Lance.

So he crawled onto the mattress and balled himself up against the wall, careful to avoid getting too close to Lance, because if he so much as brushed his elbow Keith would collapse again, right into his arms.

Lance turned to face Keith, crossing his legs under himself. “Remember when I told you to let me know when bottling stuff up didn’t feel like winning anymore?”

He nodded.

“Do you feel like you’re winning?”

He laid his cheek against his knee. “No.”

“So how about you tell me something you’re feeling bad about. Anything, literally anything.”

Keith could protest that this was hardly the time, past midnight. But they both barely slept on a good night. And this was _not_ a good night.

And it might be his last on the ship.

“They’re gonna get rid of me,” Keith said. “Allura was so pissed, and Shiro—he was disappointed, but not like in a surprised way. Like he _knew_ I was gonna mess this up. And now I—your wrists…”

Lance shrugged loosely. “I won’t tell them. And they’re—”

Shock, like a lightning bolt, startled Keith out of his slouch. “You have to. You have to _you have to_. Shiro said not to keep secrets, and if he finds out—if any of them find out, they’ll think I made you hide it, that I—I’m hurting you on _purpose_ —”

“Okay, okay,” Lance soothed, spreading his palms. “I’ll tell them. But they’re not gonna send you away, I promise.”

He swallowed, the remnants of panic still pounding in his throat.

 _We look out for each other_ , Shiro had said.

That’s not what Keith had done for Pidge. That’s not what he’d done for Lance.

“You can’t know that.” Keith’s voice was brittle.

“I won’t let them,” Lance said easily.

Maybe he should.

But Keith didn’t say it. Lance would only try to comfort him more, and Keith—he didn’t need that. He knew his position on the team, that he was hanging on by the skin of his teeth.

If they sent him away, he wouldn’t fight it. Lance would, but if the team decided Keith didn’t belong with him… He already knew didn’t. The rest of them just had to figure it out.

And then this would be over.

Lance laid his hand flat on the stretch of mattress between them, a clear invitation.

Only the open, earnest look on Lance’s face could force Keith to unwind his hold around his own ribs and stretch out, until just their pinkies overlapped.

Lance locked his fingers through Keith’s, inextricably linked, and squeezed so tight.

 

Keith asked Lance to sleep in Hunk’s room the next few nights. Keith couldn’t sleep either way, but at least with Lance safe, far away from Keith, he wasn’t terrified of closing his eyes at night.

He spent a lot of time hiding away in Red. He took her out flying sometimes, but if he got too far away from the ship, he’d get endless comms asking for updates, and he didn’t want to talk.

So mostly he just avoided them all by crawling as far into the inner mechanics of Red as he could get. He couldn’t explain why. It wasn’t productive. He wasn’t _doing_ anything. He just couldn’t force himself to exist anywhere else.

Dread swirled up inside him, knotting his chest tight. He should be following orders—training with the others to strengthen his team bond.

But he could hurt them. They could hurt _him_ , for what he did to Lance and Pidge. Even though he should be able to handle that. He’d taken worse for less.

Red let out a warm rumble, as calming as the ear-petting habit he’d gotten back into. It was a rolling insistence that everything was fine, Keith was safe, he had no reason to be afraid.

That didn’t help when he left her and he had to face the others.

Hunk caught him coming out of the hangar one day, a bit of grease smudged across his cheek. He must’ve been working on Yellow. “You okay, man? Lance is worried about you.”

Keith snuck a look at him from under his bangs. “Why?”

“He told me what happened.”

Keith braced himself. He’d _just_ gotten Hunk’s approval, and now it was gone, just like everybody else’s.

“Coran and Pidge managed to synthesize some pills for me to handle my anxiety,” Hunk continued, “maybe they could make some for you, too.”

Keith blinked, mind stuttering as he fought to catch up with the unexpected turn the conversation had taken.

“I don’t have anxiety,” he said for lack of a better response.

“You look pretty anxious, dude.”

Keith pulled his shoulders back, drew his chin up. He was still the smallest on the ship, save for Pidge. That didn’t mean he had to look it.

“I’m _prepared_.”

“For what?”

“For anything.”

His brows rose sceptically. “Like an attack? Because you look like you haven’t slept in days, so I’m not sure how good you’d be in a fight right now.”

He was right. If the Galra found them, Keith wouldn’t even be useful at the one thing he was good for.

“Whoa, hey, I didn’t meant to freak you out,” Hunk said, placing a comforting hand on Keith’s shoulder.

Keith looked at it with a frown, feeling a hundred steps behind.

Hunk yanked his hand back. “Sorry. I just meant—you haven’t been sleeping. That’s a thing friends worry about.”

He finally met Hunk’s eye, something clicking into place. His stomach sunk. “Lance didn’t tell you all of it, did he?”

Hunk scratched the back of his neck. “I think so? You had a nightmare and thought he was attacking you until you woke up?”

Keith swallowed past a dry throat, tongue suddenly feeling clunky and thick in his mouth. His gaze settled on a scuff mark on the wall.

“I hurt him,” he said, fighting to keep the tremble out of his voice.

“He told me. And he told me you didn’t want him to hide it, so I believe you didn’t do it on purpose. You’re doing your best, Keith. I get that.”

He crossed his arms, tucking his unsteady hands into his armpits

Allura was always talking about how Keith was tricking them, but they were the ones constantly trying to get him complacent and comfortable so he’d drop his guard. Lance’s best friend didn’t care that Keith hurt him? Yeah, right.

“I attacked Lance,” Keith said, heat rising in his chest. “How do you ‘get’ that?”

“Because—” Hunk stopped midsentence. “You know what, can you come with me?”

“Where?”

“A supply closet, I wanna show you something.”

“What?”

“If I told you, I wouldn’t have to show you.”

And then he took off, and Keith didn’t necessarily _have_ to follow, but he was pretty sure Hunk would haul him over his shoulder to get Keith where he wanted. So he kept his dignity and warily followed Hunk through the castle to the supply room in the dormitory hallway.

“What do you see?” Hunk asked when he slid the door open.

Blankets, towels, pillows. Was Hunk going to smother him?

Keith kept a solid distance between them as he said, “Linens.”

“And how many pillows?”

“Like six?” Was this another Earth reference he didn’t get? Or a thinly veiled threat?

“There used to be like thirty, because, you know, there are a lot of rooms in the castle. But while Lance was gone, Shiro’s nightmares got worse than ever.” Hunk pulled a pillow out and pressed it between his palms. “Shiro strangled a lot of pillows in his sleep—just tore them apart. It’s not like he did it on purpose. It’s the stress—specifically the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as far as anybody can tell.”

Keith’s blood ran cold. “So you’re saying I could’ve strangled Lance.”

“What?” Hunk’s eyes widened, startled. He chucked the pillow back into the closet and smacked the close button. “No! I’m saying it’s not your fault, and nobody but you thinks it is.”

“Does Allura know?”

Hunk opened his mouth before snapping it closed with a _click_.

Which answered his question.

It’s what Allura expected from the start, Keith turning on Lance. No wonder she got so mad every time the team ignored her. She was _right_.

But nobody was going to tell her. He’d tricked all of them.

“Keith, that’s not at all what I meant—just quit hiding out in Red, it’s not doing you any good.” Hunk paused. “Do you—do you wanna talk it out with Shiro?”

“ _No_.” His fists clenched.

Shiro had found him in Red the first day Keith took to hiding, just to say that Lance told him what happened, and that Keith could have some time to “work through things” before coming back to training, but that Shiro was always there to talk.

The idea curled his insides sourly.

“I gotta go,” Keith said before Hunk could try to convince him of anything more.

 

He couldn’t stay here.

The thought floated into his consciousness well into the night, far past futilely trying to convince himself to fall asleep.

He couldn’t sleep without Lance, and he wasn’t any good to the team exhausted, but if Keith could strangle Lance while he slept… He shivered on his cold mattress.

He didn’t belong here, he never did.

The hall was dark when he crept out of his room. He did his best to fade into the shadows as he made his way down the corridor, footfalls silent—

“Nuh uh,” a flat voice came from behind him.

Keith spun around, hand reaching for the sword on his back reflexively.

Pidge was leaning out of her room, shooting him a very unimpressed look. Her hair was a mess around her face, bangs half-covering the bandage Keith was at fault for. “Say goodbye to Lance first.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I just thought I’d skip asking where you’re going and you lying to me,” she whispered heatedly, “as if the supply pack and the spare sword snatched from the training room means you’re going anywhere but an escape pod to run away in the middle of the night.”

“No, I’m—”

“I said I was skipping that,” Pidge cut in, crossing the hallway to reach him. “So either get back in your room or wake Lance up to say goodbye.”

“No, that’s—”

She waved a hand, dismissing his words like a pesky bug. “Yeah, yeah, you’re leaving so you don’t hurt him. Got that. Only way I’m letting you get in an escape pod is if you tell Lance you’re leaving first.”

Keith shook his head, adjusting the bag strap digging into his shoulder. If he told Lance, he’d convince Keith to say. He wouldn’t even need to say anything—the look on Lance’s face would be enough to get Keith to scrap the whole plan.

“Right,” Pidge said, understanding his thoughts as easily as if he’d spoken. “This isn’t a bad YA novel. You don’t get to leave someone ‘for their own good’. That’s bullshit. Lance is a big boy, he can make his own decisions. Not to mention that we _all_ need you.”

“You can find a new red paladin.”

“Maybe. But we don’t have to with you right here.” She rounded him and shoved his back, pushing him back to his room. “So go to bed, I’ll be back in a minute. And remember that I know how to raise every single alarm on this ship, so if I come back and you’re not here, you’re gonna regret it.”

She sat him down on his bed and left without another word, leaving Keith reeling. That was not at all how he’d expected his departure to go.

It wasn’t much different from when Pidge had sought him out after he let her down on the mission to that Galra base. She’d actually let him finish his sentences then, but she’d been just as adamant that she was right and he was wrong.

And she had a much better track record of being right, so it was hard to argue with Pidge.

He was sitting exactly where Pidge left him when she returned, with a mug in one hand and some sort of speaker in the other.

Pidge handed him the mug. “Chamomile tea, or at least something that smells like it. It should help you sleep. Because I assume you haven’t slept in—what’s it been since the thing with Lance, three days?”

“Yeah.”

She set the speaker on his bedside table and pressed a button. The soft sound of cresting waves filled his room.

“Soothing ocean sounds. There’s also rainforest, whale songs, or traffic, if that’s more your thing. And I’m setting your thermostat to an ideal sleeping temperature.” She put her hands on her hips. “After you sleep, you’re gonna realize that we will not be better off without you, okay? And then tomorrow, you’re gonna hug Lance, because you’ve been avoiding him for days. And then you’re gonna sort yourself out.”

Keith took a sip of the tea. He wasn’t convinced of its sleep-inducing abilities, but it wasn’t bad. “How?”

She squinted at him through her glasses. “Do I look like a therapist? I don’t _know_. Talk to someone. Ask Coran about alien medication options. Do some art.” She poked at his thermostat before turning back to him. “Do you need anything else?”

“I—I guess not,” he said, at a total loss. “Thanks, Pidge.”

“You’re welcome.” She took another moment to look him over. Gentler than she had been this whole exchange, she said, “You do wanna be here right?”

Keith picked at a stray thread on his bedspread. “I wanna _deserve_ to be here.”

The corner of her mouth twitched up. “So do the rest of us. Get some sleep, Keith.”

 

Sleep awarded Keith a much clearer head, especially when he awoke and found he hadn’t strangled any of his pillows.

He spent a few minutes slowly waking up, staring at the drawings of the team on his wall.

He’d been fully committed to leaving them behind last night—both the drawings and the actual team—because he didn’t deserve them.

And he still didn’t, but Lance and the team sure didn’t deserve to be left in the lurch without a paladin, either.

Pidge’s words hit him so much harder in the cold light of the morning. How could he leave without a word? Pidge accused him of doing it for Lance’s good, but Keith was just running away from what scared him. Now that he had even a hint of a choice of what to do with his life, it was so tempting to bolt from every problem.

But that wasn’t fair. Not to Lance, not to Shiro—not to any of the team who believed he could be better. He couldn’t let them down.

This hiding and cowering of the past few days had to stop, no matter how much he wanted to sit in Red all day. There’d been plenty of times back on the Galra ship—most of the time, if he was being honest—that he wanted to curl up in his bunk and pretend he didn’t exist. But he wasn’t allowed to then, and he couldn’t do that to the team now, either

He had to be better.

Keith took a deep breath, packing away the insecurity and misery and shoving it far, far down.

He sought Lance out and gave him that hug Pidge told him to.

Lance gobbled it up, squeezing Keith tight like he’d really missed him.

Keith was still waiting for Lance to realize that Keith was a piece of shit and kick him out of this special place in his life, but somehow not even the past few days had done it.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said. He could go into detail for everything he was apologizing for, but he was pretty sure Lance didn’t want that.

Lance’s hand came up to cradle the back his head, thumbing over the back of his ear. “I missed you.”

He buried his face into the crook of Lance’s shoulder. “Yeah.”

Pidge turned the corner of the hall, rolling her eyes when she saw them wrapped around each other. “Team exercise in ten, if you two can peel yourselves off each other.”

“Fuck off, Pidge,” Lance grumbled, tightening his grip on Keith before lifting him off his feet and swinging him around. Lance kept talking over Keith’s yelp of surprise. “We can fight this. Kick her, Keith.”

A bark of laughter burst out of Keith. “No, put me down!”

“You’re right, this would work better if you were on my shoulders. Get up there.”

“No!”

Pidge ran away, laughing, as Lance gave chase, hand wrapped around Keith’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Keith and Lance obvs talk more about the whole thing, but it's the same sort of reassurances that I don't feel the need to go over again tbh.  
> Next chapter we actually leave the castle ship!! I love the next chapter, so it'll probs be posted next weekend.  
> Lemme know what you thought of this one!! I hope it lived up to expectations.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, thank you for all your feedback!  
> Heads up for more of the same: panic attack/flashback, and a bit of violence.  
> A fan favourite is BACK in this and she's got a GIRLFRIEND (k, she's not a fan fave, I don't even know if y'all remember this OC but I hope you do bc I love her).  
> Anyway, please enjoy!!!

After that ordeal, Lance and Keith had another conversation about trust and doubt (on Lance’s end and Keith’s, respectively), and how Keith almost left.

Lance tried not to obsess over how Keith was only still with him by the grace of Pidge, and tried to force down the heart-stopping panic every time he imagined waking up to Keith being _gone._ Because Keith hadn’t done it to be mean, he’d been freaked out and hurting and convinced it was a good idea.

But Lance would take a hundred bruised wrists over Keith being gone without a word.

Didn’t tell Keith that, though. Just told him to _talk_ about his feelings instead of hiding out and then bolting.

And they decided to sleep in the same bed again. Coran was still working on some sort of medication that would work with Keith’s biology, but Lance didn’t want to wait. Keith didn’t either, though it took forever to get him to admit it.

Keith was super tense that first night, but that might have had something to do with Lance holding him just a bit too tight. He didn’t complain, though. And in the following weeks, he didn’t have another episode.

And even if he did—what was Lance supposed to do, abandon him when he was finally dealing with his trauma?

Though to be fair, Keith’s way of dealing looked a lot like throwing himself into training with even more vigor than before, but it seemed to be helping, along with talking stuff out with Lance (which mostly involved Keith recalling horrifying anecdotes from his childhood and asking if it was fucked up—and Lance’s answer was always yes).

Since Keith was training even more, and since by Shiro’s decree he always had to train _with_ someone, that left Lance sitting awkwardly on the sidelines a lot just so he wouldn’t be alone while his friends trained without him.

So Lance wheedled with Shiro, threw him some puppy-dog eyes, and Shiro tentatively let Lance increase his training.

And he got right back into the swing of things, not… cowering or whatever Shiro expected him to do when faced with a fight. He was doing good, he was improving.

So when they received a distress call from a refugee ship, it didn’t take much to convince Shiro to let them both join the mission.

“You’re sure you’re ready for this?” Shiro looked between Lance and Keith after their short briefing. “It could get rough out there.”

“Which is exactly why you need us,” Lance said. “And Voltron. And why those people on those ship need us, all of us--”

Shiro lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, alright. Keith, what about you?”

Keith balked, as if it had never occurred to him to stay back when Lance was going. “Of course I’m coming. If--if you’ll let me. I won’t let you down this time.”

He nodded with a smile. “I believe you. Suit up.”

It probably had less to do Lance’s debate skills and more to do with the sheer size of the Galra fleet surrounding the ship, but Lance was still psyched.

“We’re back, baby!” He pumped his fist as he bounced down the hall to the lion hangar. “First mission as Voltron! Who’s ready? I’m ready!”

“Lance, people could be dying,” Hunk said.

“Not with us around! Let’s goooo.”

It was such a rush, flying through the sky in Blue, with his friends, Keith zipping along in Red.

It just felt right.

They formed Voltron and took down the Galra fleet as one synchronized team before they reached the ship that sent the distress signal. There weren’t all that many Galra soldiers inside, so it wasn’t long before the teams was gathered on the bridge of _The_ _Starseeker_. Most of the passengers were refugees escaping Galra-invaded planets, which explained why there were such a variety of alien species aboard.

Shiro was checking with the captain that all passengers was accounted for, while Keith fidgeted with his helmet. He’d blacked out his visor so nobody would recognize him as Galra, but it was kind of conspicuous that he was the only member of the team who hadn’t taken their helmet off.

“We’re missing a few Nebblians,” said Captain Xylina, a jiggly alien with green, cloud-like hair.

“Okay, so you think they fell under a couch, or what?” Lance asked.

He couldn’t see Keith’s eye roll, but he could hear it in his words, “Nebblians are a feathered bipedal species from the planet Nebblios.”

“Oh, bird people? Sweet,” Lance said. He turned to Captain Xylina. “Any idea where they went?”

“The lower decks, if I recall correctly,” they replied.

Lance saluted them and grabbed Keith’s arm. “We’re on it.”

The two descended into the maintenance area, dark and full of nooks and crannies to hide within. Keith didn’t seem to like it much. He definitely didn’t like Lance’s bird calls.

“You’re giving away our position.”

“Yeah, that’s the point. We’re trying to find the stragglers.”

“Enemy combatants could still be in the area,” Keith said. Lance had made fun of him for sounding like a video game character when he got into Mission Mode™ before, but since Keith had never played a video game, he wasn’t all that entertaining to mock. “Stay sharp.”

“I’m always sharp.”

Keith let out an argumentative hum, but before he could properly respond they came upon an open doorway next to a metal staircase leading up.

After a few quick nods shared between them, Lance headed into the room ahead while Keith took the stairs that led to a catwalk twenty feet above.

Lance kept his blaster up and ready to go as he eased forward, just in case. Flickering lights cast inky shadows over metal shelves lined with crates of ship supplies.

Keith’s voice came in through the helmet. “There’s another room up here, I’m gonna lose sight of you while I check it out. Keep in contact.”

He saw Keith slipping through a door up on the catwalk. “Roger that.”

Lance kept an eye out as he moved forward, each wavering shadow and minor creak of the ship raising another hair on his arm.

“Hello?” he called, mostly to settle his nerves. “Paladins of Voltron, here to help. Unless you’re Galra, then we’re here to kick your butt.”

A scuffle sounded from the back of the room.

Lance followed the noise cautiously. He suddenly wished he’d asked the captain exactly how many Nebblians they were looking for.

A stack of boxes towered in the corner, shaking slightly.

Lance nudged a box aside and peered down.

Two aliens huddled on the grimy floor, wrapped in each other’s wings, eyes wide and terrified.

Lance froze, from his mouth half-open all the way down to the fingers on his blaster. All except for his heartbeat suddenly thundering in his ears.

He was right back in the battle arena with that helpless Amphlian, begging for mercy.

And god, he hated that he’d never got their name, that they’d forever be a nameless prisoner in Lance’s memories.

He wouldn’t do that again.

“What’re your names?” he asked, tongue dry and too-thick in his mouth.

Compared to his pulse thumping hummingbird-wing fast in the hollow of his throat, the next moments seemed to slog past in slow motion.

The older Nebblian shook her head. She lifted a wing, glimmering eyes zeroing in on something behind Lance’s shoulder.

And finally a voice yelling at Lance to _turn around_ penetrated the fog clinging to him.

So he turned.

A Galra soldier loomed. Huge and snarling, a gleaming sword in his meaty fist.

That voice was snapping at him to shoot.

But Lance was still stuck in his memories, a heavy thought gripping his bones.

What if this Galra soldier could change? What if he _wanted_ to change, but nobody had ever given him the chance? What if—

The Galra lifted his sword.

The birds screamed.

A red blur shot out of the air.

Keith slammed onto the Galra’s shoulders, knocking him to the ground in one strike.

Lance looked up at the catwalk, then down at Keith, whose knees now bracketed the Galra’s head.

Had he _jumped_ —?

The Galra bucked Keith off. He had Keith in the most vulnerable fight position faster than Lance could blink--pinned to the ground underneath him. Right where Lance had that Amphlian when he killed them.

The same moment that thought flicked through his head, he had his blaster aimed.

He squeezed the trigger.

The Galra soldier flinched at the first hit, like he was going to get up. But Lance’s finger was glued down, a steady _pewpewpew_ streaming from his bayard.

Blood gushed from the Galra’s armour and his body went limp, but Lance was frozen, finger rooted to the trigger.

“Lance. Lance! Lance, quit it!” Keith’s shout bounced around his mind for a few moments before it registered.

Lance released the trigger, arm swinging down so fast he almost dropped his bayard.

Keith shrugged the guard’s body off him, using his shield as leverage. His shield, that he’d brought up to protect himself in case Lance’s shots bore right through the guard’s chest into him.

“Keith?” The word dropped from Lance’s lips like air. He rushed to Keith sprawled on the floor. “Are you okay?”

He wiped blood off his visor. Not his own. “Yeah, whatever, are _you_?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He licked sweat off his upper lip, gaze jumping to the catwalk. “Did you jump from up there?”

“If you’d shot him when I told you to—” He cut himself off. “What happened, Lance?” His words were hard.

“I…” For once Lance started a sentence with no way to end it. “I was thinking.”

He stared at the Galra lying motionless on the ground. Hopelessness over a lost opportunity swelled in his chest, even as he tried to rationalize that there was no other option.

“Did…” A small voice came from behind him.

Lance stuck a shaky smile on his face in the second it took him to face the Nebblians.

“Did you say you were Voltron?” The smaller Nebblian stared at him, orange beak agape in wonder.

“Two of the paladins of it, you betcha! Here to help.” His voice wasn’t as steady he wanted, but he tried to shake it off as he helped dismantle their makeshift box hideout.

The one who’d spoken was obviously a child, skinny chicken legs barely bringing her up to the other’s hip. They were both covered in cyan blue feathers, but the taller one had black markings around her eyes, and a darker blue lining her throat.

“I’m Lance, this is Keith. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Jhenya.” The older Nebblian said, laying a wing around the shorter one. “And this is my nest-mate, Sybinne. We’ve heard stories of your bravery.”

Lance grinned. “And our charm?”

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith hissed. He hadn’t moved from his spot on the floor.

Lance crouched back at his side. “You okay?”

“Just secure the area,” he grunted dismissively.

Lance did so, willing the guilt of his uselessness to dissolve. He found no more Galra or aliens in need of rescue in the room, so he returned, and found Keith still on the ground.

The Nebblians were flocking him, chattering softly to each other.

Lance jogged up to them. “What’s up?”

“I think he’s injured his leg,” Jhenya said, wings rubbing together in worry.

“I’m fine,” Keith insisted.

“Can you stand?” Lance asked.

Keith yelped when he tried to move his left leg.

Lance dropped to his knees beside him, holding him still by the shoulder. “I didn’t tell you to stand, I asked if you _could_. You probably broke your freaking knee cap hitting the ground from twenty feet up. What is wrong with you? That jump could’ve killed you.”

“He was definitely gonna kill _you_!” Keith said. “What was I supposed to do, watch?”

He sighed, guilt clawing back up his throat. “Sorry. Let’s just get you up.”

“Will you need help?” Sybinne asked Lance. “Are you going to… stop to think again?”

“No, I—I’m sorry, I’m fine.” For now.

“Don’t apologize, you saved us,” Jhenya said. She looked down at her sister. “I would’ve—I think I’d have done more than hide if I weren’t worried about keeping her safe.”

“Don’t blame _me_ ,” Sybinne grumbled.

Jhenya clucked softly. “In any case, I’m incredibly grateful you two arrived when you did. Thank you.”

Keith put more weight on him than Lance expected when he brought him to his feet. He must’ve really fucked up his knee.

“We’re grateful we could help,” Lance said. “Let’s get back.”

As they headed back to the bridge, Lance spewed his regular spiel about Voltron, trying to distract himself from how he couldn’t see Keith’s face to determine exactly how much pain he was in.

Sybinne was recovering quickly from her brush with death.

"And is it true, _is it_ ,” she asked, tripping over her taloned feet to keep pace with the rest of them. “That you all smash together and turn into a giant cat?"

Lance offered a strained smile, bearing most of Keith's weight. “Correctamundo, little one. If we have time we'll definitely put on a show for you guys."

This was punctuated by a grunt from Keith.

"Or maybe not," Lance said, too carried away in acting like everything was fine to remember that it wasn't.

"I've heard the melding is possible because the Paladin bonds are so strong." Jhenya nodded between Keith and Lance. "I can see now that that's true."

Lance nodded. "That's right! Best buds, all of us."

He could've sworn Keith squeezed his hip a little tighter. Whether it was because of the comment or the pain, Lance couldn't tell.

They reached the bridge shortly after that.

Jhenya immediately regaled her fellow passengers how Lance and Keith had saved her and her little sister’s life. But, bless her heart, she implied that Lance got distracted talking to her and Sybinne, and that’s what prompted Keith to throw himself off the catwalk. Which didn’t reflect great on Lance’s perception skills, but it was a hell of a better story than Lance just staring at the Galra waiting to get stabbed.

Lance set Keith up with a chair, who insisted he was fine, even though there was no way he could get back to get Red and back to the castle alone.

Shiro was planning safe passage for the ship with Captain Xylina, so it was Hunk tutting over Keith, while throwing plenty of concerned looks Lance’s way, silently asking what the hell he’d been doing while Keith hurt himself.

Lance hated to admit that he fucked up so badly in his first foray back into active duty, so he was planning to hold off on revealing what had really happened for as long as possible.

Because what would Shiro do when he heard? Kick Lance to the sidelines again?

They needed to be able to form Voltron. They needed Lance.

Right?

Lance would just power through. As long as he could.

He shot a reassuring smile at Hunk.

Hunk didn’t seem mollified, but excused himself to help Pidge help the crew fix some security tech the Galra had wrecked.

Lance touched Keith’s shoulder. “Should we head out?”

“Not on my account. I’m _fine_ ,” he added when Lance sent him a flat look. “And you’re always saying this is the best part of missions.”

“Not when you’re bleeding out.”

“I’m not bleeding—”

“Or just in excruciating pain, whatever.”

“I’ve had worse.”

Before Lance could respond, Jhenya and Sybinne returned to them.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jhenya began. “I’m sure you have important Voltron business to attend to, but I have a small request.”

Lance nodded. “Go for it, we’re here to serve.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I hope it’s not too much to ask, but I’m a sculptor, and I would love to make a statue of the legendary paladins of Voltron wherever we next find a home.”

Lance’s face lit up, mood lifting in a flash. “That’s almost as good as a parade. We fully sign off on this.”

“Wonderful.” Her eyes crinkled, and he took that as a smile. She turned to Keith. “I’m not sure why you’ve kept your helmet on this long, but my request is actually to see you face, in order to render an accurate depiction of today’s heroes.”

Lance and Keith exchanged a look. Keith’s helmet was still blacked out, but Lance could imagine his expression, because his own face was mirrored back to him in the visor’s reflection.

It clearly read _Uh oh_.

“Uh, nah,” Lance said, turning back to Jhenya. “Keith’s got this gross rash, you don’t want him mucking up your beautiful statue. I know it’ll be beautiful because I’ll be in it.” He winked.

Keith’s sigh echoed through his helmet.

Jhenya bobbed her head. “Oh, I’m quite a skilled sculptor. I’d have no problem making his skin smooth as marzite.”

“Ooh, is that like marble?” Lance clasped his hands to his chest.

Keith slapped his arm before advising Jhenya “You don’t want me as a statue, trust me. Just do the four of them.”

“But I couldn’t leave you out.” She put a wing around her little sister. “You saved us. Both of you.”

“If you think you’re ugly, that won’t matter,” Sybinne piped up from under her sister’s hold. “All you Earthlings look weird to us.”

Jhenya squawked. “Sybinne, _hush_.”

She looked up at her petulantly. “It’s true, though.”

Jhenya smoothed down her plumage, admitting, “She’s not wrong.” Her brows drew together. “And I would be so honoured to create a lasting art piece celebrating your courage and heroism—”

Keith’s shoulders tightened, and Lance thought he was going to argue, but instead he swore under his breath. “We have to go.”

“Huh? Is it your leg? Does—”

Keith tugged on his hand. “ _Now_.”

“Oh, wait, there’s my beloved,” Jhenya said, gesturing to somebody in the crowd. “Just let me introduce you!”

She waved over a four-armed alien with burgundy skin, porcupine-y hair, and a scowl on her scaly face.

Keith’s grip got bone-crushingly tight on Lance’s hand. He wasn’t sure what had set him off, but the sooner they got him into a healing pod, the better.

“This is Wupa.” Jhenya’s encircled her with a wing. “These are the paladins who saved us, Keith and Lance. I was just telling them about my planned statue of them.”

Wupa lifted a brow. “You planning to sculpt him with that helmet on?”

“He’s ugly,” Sybinne explained helpfully.

Jhenya stomped on her foot. “Be _nice_.”

Lance laughed, slipping an arm under Keith’s shoulders and helping him stand. “He’s got a rash.”

“Has he got a way to speak?” Wupa asked flatly.

They all looked at Keith. He leaned on Lance, letting an incredibly long pause pull before saying, “Yeah. Hi. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Wupa’s eyes narrowed.

Then spikes struck out from her hands. “Take off your helmet.”

Spikes… Angry alien girl…

“Oh no.” Lance’s stomach sunk with recognition.

The Sa’rasen who’d stabbed Keith, whose home he’d stormed into with orders to kill on sight.

She hadn’t forgotten about Keith any more than he’d forgotten about her.

Lance’s gasp was overshadowed by Jhenya’s cry of, “Wupa, the statue isn’t that important!”

Wupa glared at her. “Do you know who that is?”

“He’s a paladin of Voltron,” Jhenya said, tugging her back. “And he injured himself saving us, so please—”

Wupa wrenched out of Jhenya’s grasp, advancing on Keith. “Take. It. Off.”

Lance held out a placating, sweaty hand. He rushed in with, “Okay, okay, you don’t need your, uh, claws. You know, he didn’t tell the other soldiers where you and your family went? So you could—”

She turned her claws on Lance. “How fucking dare you—”

Keith stepped forward.

Well, he _leaned_ forward, because Lance was still supporting most of his weight, but he did his best to block Lance’s body with his. “Don’t.”

Then he slid off his helmet.

And they already had most of the room’s attention thanks to Wupa’s outburst, so he was completely exposed. Fluffy ears standing razor-straight, pale purple skin on full display. His pulse fluttered at his throat.

Jhenya’s gaze flicked to Lance, as if to check this wasn’t a shock for him, too; that this wasn’t some wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Sybinne tilted her head at a 90 degree angle. “What kind of rash makes you look Galra?”

Jhenya pulled her back, though she still looked more confused than fearful.

Lance, sweating bullets, said, “He’s only half—”

Which was as far as he got before a nearby alien started screeching bloody murder.

From there it was all gasps of horror and yelling and Shiro’s face draining of colour as Captain Xylina said, “Galra, a _Galra_? You brought a Galra onto my ship?”

Lance swallowed past a dry throat, debating the best course of action.

Then Wupa gritted out, low and threatening, “Get. _Out_.”

And that was as a good idea as any.

Lance slipped an arm around Keith and got him out of there.

They got to Red without much difficulty. Anybody paying attention to them was yelling at them to leave—they didn’t want Keith on their ship any more than Wupa did.

As soon as Lance dropped Keith in the pilot’s seat, Keith asked, “Are you okay?”

“ _What_?”

“Do you wanna talk?”

“No, are you _serious_?”

Keith pushed his hair off his pallid forehead, slick with sweat. “That Galra almost got you.”

He gaped at him. “And you busted your leg and just had a roomful of people demanding your head. This is a _you_ situation.”

Lance was almost glad for the ironclad reason to deflect all worry back to Keith.

“I’m fine.” Keith winced as he shifted in his seat. “Are you—?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Lance snapped, frustration bubbling over.

Because he was very much not fine, and everybody was right about that. He was a mess, and he wasn’t fit for missions—he’d already taken down dozens of Galra before he fucked up with the last one. So if there was no way to know when he was gonna fuck up, how was he supposed to do anything?

And now Keith was _looking_ at him with that intense gaze and furrowed brow, like he was trying to burrow into Lance’s mind and take him apart like a puzzle to understand him.

“What was that back there?” Keith asked.

Lance shrugged jerkily. “I dunno.”

“Maybe Shiro will—”

“He doesn’t need to know.”

He looked at him for a long moment. He asked quietly, “What?”

“None of them need to know—”

"Are you serious? Why do you keep wanting to hide things from your friends?” He shook his head, at a loss. “Lance, what if this happens again—?”

“They won’t let me back in the field, Keith. C’mon, be a bro—"

"Was I not being a bro when I saved your life?” His voice rose. He grimaced as he tried to stand.

Lance grabbed his shoulder to hold him down.

Keith’s fingers curled around his wrist. His bloodshot eyes bore into his. “I’m serious. I’m not letting you die over your own impatience.”

“You think I’m gonna die?”

A beat passed, that trademark weight settling across Keith’s sweaty brow like a fog.

“If that happens again,” he said grimly. “If I’m not there? What happens, Lance?”

“I can take care of myself,” he said reflexively.

“Then what am I doing here?” Keith’s fingers slipped off his wrist, leaving his skin clammy and cold. “You have your friends back, you’re safe in the castle. If everybody in the universe is gonna hate me on sight, if you don’t want my help, if I’m only gonna hurt you… then what am I supposed to do?” He propped his elbow on his arm rest, scrubbing at hand over his face. “Why am I here?”

Lance’s heart jumped to his throat. “That’s not what I meant. Please don’t—” He swallowed thickly, tried to keep the whine out of his voice. “Please don’t leave.”

Keith shook his head, tears finally brimming over and silently rolling down his cheeks. “I’m not. I’m not going anywhere, I promise, just—”

“I’m sorry,” he rushed in. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like—like—” Like Lance didn’t _want_ him, didn’t appreciate him, didn’t need him. “Thank you, by the way. I don’t think I said that. Thank you. I’m sorry.”

He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Lance, what _happened_?”

Guilt squeezed his insides. He couldn’t look away from Keith, resigned and tired, light purple skin almost grey.

This wasn’t the time for any of this.

“I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry.” He pushed Keith’s sweaty bangs off his forehead. “We can talk about this later,” he said gently. “We gotta get you in a healing pod now, though.”

Keith, ever-so-slightly, tilted his head into Lance’s palm. He closed his eyes. “Okay. Thank you.”

He pressed a kiss to his hair. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'know thinking about it, this chap might be my favourite just bc I packed in every Futurama reference I restrained myself from using in every other chap. Most of them are really minor, but I literally ripped off the Nebblian character design from that one terrible chicken lawyer lmao (also Nebblian sounds a lot like Niblonian :P).  
> This chap is also the most actiony this fic ever gets just fyi, so it's all downhill from here lol.  
> Aaaanyway, next chapter is Keith POV, then a special surprise guest POV, then Keith again bc I don't know what pacing is, and then Lance to round it out. So this is actually the last Lance POV until the final chap.  
> Lemme know what you thought!


	10. Chapter 10

Keith’s foot was propped on the lounge table. He’d torn a ligament and crushed something else, but even though he’d been healed in the cryo pod, his knee still pulsed with a phantom pain. His brain hadn’t got the message yet that there was nothing left to scream about.

“That was kind of rude though, right?” Hunk asked from the chair opposite Keith. They were debriefing after the debacle on _The Starseeker_. “Like, I _get_ it, but we’d also just saved them, so I’m not sure they needed to, like, riot when they found out Keith was Galra.”

It could’ve been worse.

It could’ve been better, too, but at least this way Keith could stop wondering if Wupa had survived.

She was fully alive, and fully hating him.

“I hadn’t even fixed their security system yet,” Pidge complained, cross-legged on the floor. “What if more Galra show up?”

Allura crossed her arms, standing next to Shiro. Her presence was cool as always, lips pursed in a self-satisfied but somehow disappointed fashion. Was she getting tired of being right about Keith over and over again? “We could have guaranteed them safe passage to their destination if—”

“If they’d taken a few seconds to reflect and realize Keith was only there to help them, yes I agree,” Lance cut in.

His reassuring weight leaning against Keith’s side was the only thing keeping Keith from slipping out of the room while the others discussed his transgressions. They hadn’t had time to talk, but his rest in the cryo pod had made him a little less frantic, a little less desperate.

Without the residual adrenaline amping him up, Keith was just… deflated.

“How did you expect them to react?” Allura asked. “Galra protecting people from other Galra? It’s ludicrous.”

Lance threw his hands in the air. “It’s not ludicrous if it’s what happened.”

Keith dropped a hand on Lance’s arm, quieting him. “No, she’s right. Next time I’ll go straight back to Red. I should’ve come right back to the castle in the first place.”

“You couldn’t leave alone with your knee—”

“Which is another thing we need to discuss,” Shiro interrupted Lance. “Keith, that was an incredibly risky move, jumping from so high.”

“I was protecting Lance.” Keith jerked his chin out. “You _wanted_ me to protect the team.”

Allura sniffed. “Your morality shouldn’t be dependent on your orders—”

“It’s _not_ ,” Keith snapped, a bite creeping into his tone for the first time this conversation. “You think I do whatever—?”

He cut himself on, swallowing his bitterness.

Obviously he didn’t save Lance’s life just because he was ordered to.

And he wouldn’t have killed Wupa even though he’d been ordered to, either. But Wupa would never believe that, and neither would Allura—who would? Who would trust a Galra?

He clenched his fists against the conch. “I saved him because we’re a team. And I’m _trying_ —”

So what?

So what if he was _trying_?

Lance had quoted an Earth philosopher a few weeks ago when Hunk failed to replicate a dessert—he’d said “Do or do not, there is no try.” It lined up surprisingly well with what Keith had been taught all his life.

You didn’t _try_ to survive. You survived or you didn’t.

He was _trying_ to be better? That was nothing.

Keith’s shoulders fell, fight draining out of him as quickly as it had come. “This isn’t working. It was never going to.”

Lance squeezed his hand, but before he could argue on Keith’s behalf, Coran piped up. “Chin up, Keith, this _is_ working. Voltron’s goal has always been to keep the universe safe, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Shiro nodded. “It’s not a popularity contest.”

“Nobody will want our help if we don’t have their trust,” Allura said. “I agree popularity isn’t our main objective, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

“So I’ll just stay in Red next time,” Keith insisted.

“That’s not fair,” Lance said.

“It really is,” Keith said. He didn’t need to be honoured with statues, and he’d never master the polite chit chat Lance was so good at. “It’s not like I’m interested in the…” He waved a hand. “Diplomatic side of things anyway.”

Allura’s eyebrow twitched as if to say _Clearly_.

Shiro lifted a shoulder. “Maybe next time we should be upfront about it.”

“That’s better than lying to them,” Allura began, “but I can’t see it playing out any better.”

“I agree,” Keith said. “I’ll stay in Red—”

Lance turned to face him fully. “What about the long-term? You can’t hide out in your lion forever. We need to…” He snapped his fingers. “We gotta put a good PR spin on this. Who here has had media training?”

Keith was lost.

Pidge rolled her eyes, so he assumed it was some sort of joke.

“It might be a while until either of you are on mission again,” Shiro said, “so it’s not a priority right now.”

Lance sat straighter, ready to argue. “It’s not our fault—”

“This isn’t because you did anything wrong,” Shiro assured him. “We saved that ship; we did a good job. We’ll discuss future strategy later. Let’s finish up this meeting.” He paused. “Keith, can I speak with you privately?”

His chest seized with immediate stress. Lance shot him an encouraging look before Keith rose mechanically from the couch and followed Shiro into the hall.

He clasped his hands behind his back, bracing himself for what was to come.

“I spoke to Lance about what happened on the ship while you were healing,” Shiro said. “And I wanted to thank you. It was reckless, obviously, but… brave. It was what was needed.”

“Oh…” He blinked. “You’re welcome.”

He tugged his sleeve cuff down before saying, “I also wanted to know if he’s done anything like that before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can tell me, Keith. It’s okay, no one’s in trouble. I just need to know.”

He shrugged jerkily. “Honestly? Maybe. I don’t know what happened. But unless it was some kind of hallucination… I’ve never seen him do that before.”

Keith was racing across the catwalk when he spotted the Galra creeping up on Lance, but he didn’t think he’d have to do anything because Lance was right there. Except Lance hadn’t moved, despite Keith yelling at him over the comms. So he didn’t even think about the fall before he threw himself off the catwalk.

And then Lance kept shooting that Galra, long after he was nothing more than a corpse weighing Keith down.

“It was like he wasn’t even there,” Keith said quietly. “He looked just like he did in that battle arena when he had to… you know.”

Wide, empty eyes and a melted expression, trembling hands and white knuckles around the trigger.

Shiro nodded. “That makes sense. And it’s exactly what I was worried about. I just thought he was doing better—”

“He is.”

Lance hadn’t hallucinated in ages, and he was way more focused, and… he seemed lighter, like he wasn’t quite as dragged down.

But after today, he had to wonder exactly how much of it was actual progress and how much of it was Lance _convincing_ himself he was better.

“Yeah,” Shiro sighed after his own internal musing. “He’s definitely better, although I don’t know…” He shook his head. “Like I said, that’s a discussion for another time. And we’ll figure out how to avoid what happened on _The Starseeker_ with you, too, I promise. How’re you holding up with that?”

Keith offered a tight smile. “It’s—it’s nothing I didn’t expect. Nothing I can’t handle.”

Shiro squeezed his shoulder. “Remember you helped save those people, Keith. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

He doubted it, but didn’t bother arguing.

“Any time, Shiro.”

 

It was the middle of the night and all was still, except the whirring of Keith’s mind as he and Lance tried to sleep. Though judging by Lance’s fidgeting, he wasn’t any closer to falling asleep than Keith.

He trailed his fingers through Lance’s hair, half-humming the lullaby Lance had taught him.

“ _Everywhere I'm looking now, I'm surrounded by your embrace_ ,” he murmured, hoping to lull Lance to rest. “ _Baby, I can see your halo_ …”

That’s all he could remember.

Lance sighed heavily. “I can’t sleep.”

“I told you we should’ve written the lyrics down—”

Lance snorted. “It’s not your singing that’s keeping me awake.”

Keith knew what he meant. He nodded at the door, offering the only solution he’d come up with to help them sleep. Lance nodded back, slipping out of bed before tugging on a pair of sweatpants to replace his pajamas.

They crept through the dimly lit halls hand in hand until they reached the bright lights of the training room.

They each grabbed a sparring pole, and after a few minutes of mostly silent stretching, they started sparring in hopes they’d tire themselves out.

“So…” Lance began after they’d worked up a sweat.

“What?”

“We said we’d talk.”

Keith swung at Lance, who easily blocked him. Their poles _clacked_ in the beat it took Keith to respond. “So talk.”

“Okay… How did all that stuff with the refugees make you feel?”

“Shitty.” Keith ducked under Lance’s strike. “What happened with you?”

Lance shook his head stubbornly. “C’mon. Allura’ still acting like we can’t trust you. How do you feel about that?” Lance deftly deflected both Keith’s attack and his question. “You need to know that everyone has your back, so you can feel safe when you’re in the field, and at home when you’re in the castle.”

Keith huffed, so exasperated that he didn’t have the chance to block Lance’s hit to his ribs. He grunted, and Lance winced sympathetically. “It’s foolish to feel safe in the field,” Keith said. “You should always be ready for danger.”

“And in the castle?”

“I’m at home when I’m with you,” Keith said like it was obvious. “That’s enough.”

And Lance… his whole body loosened. The tension eased from his shoulders, he got this breathlessly fond look on his face, and something swelled in Keith’s chest so hard he had trouble breathing.

(This was different from the look Lance got whenever Keith lifted his shirt to wipe sweat from his face, or when he tied his hair up, or a dozen other things that “distracted” Lance when they sparred.

The first time it happened, Keith asked self-consciously, “What, are my eyes glowing?”

Lance scoffed, stepping in close and running his hands over his chest to his arms. “No, dummy, it’s all of this.”

And. Well. That was nice, too.)

“Do you even know how sappy you are sometimes?” Lance asked, a soft smile still on his lips.

Keith willed down his blush. “Do you even know how dopey you look sometimes?”

Lance grinned and struck out with his pole again. Their fight picked back up, as did the original point of their conversation, which Keith didn’t appreciate as much.

“So if you feel so at home with me, tell me what’s up,” Lance said. “You don’t have to worry about watching your tone or whatever. _I’m_ not gonna call you a big bad Galra.”

“Thanks,” he said flatly.

“Come on,” he wheedled.

What did Lance want him to say? He was a Galra, the universe hated him—complaining about it wasn’t fair, and it wouldn’t do anything.

“You first,” Keith said. “Has that kind of thing happened before?”

“No.” Lance swiped his pole at Keith a few times before huffing out, “Just—Jhenya and her sister reminded me of the Amphlian and I… got distracted.”

Keith nodded, focusing on their sparring match before the words really sunk in. “That was more than distracted, Lance. You were staring right at that Galra doing _nothing_.”

“I know! I was there! I’m fully aware of how useless I was.”

Lance stumbled forward. Keith grabbed his arm.

He made sure Lance was steady before saying, “That’s not what I meant. I was… I was scared, Lance.” He waited for Lance to meet his eye, but he wouldn’t. Keith swallowed past a dry throat. “Were you?”

Lance gnawed on his lip, debating his response. “Do you feel okay with killing Galra soldiers indiscriminately?”

Keith waited a few moments for the words to make sense, but they didn’t. “I don’t understand the question. If they’re attacking you, or the team, or some innocent alien—which they always are—there’s nothing else we can do.”

Lance shrugged, sticking the butt of his pole against the mat to lean on it. “We could try talking to them. Maybe some of them don’t like everything Zarkon’s doing. Maybe—”

Keith cut him off, finally seeing where this was going. “There’s no time for intense philosophical debates in the middle of battle, Lance. It’s kill or be killed and Galra will _always_ go for the kill.”

“ _You_ didn’t,” he said in a small voice. “With Wupa.”

Keith’s breath left him.

He desperately wanted to return to sparring, just to give him the familiar distraction of a fight. He brought his pole up, forcing Lance to move with him before he said, “That was different.”

“How?”

 _Clack_ as Lance blocked Keith’s hit.

“She stabbed me. I couldn’t fight back.”

 _Clack_.

“Because you _let_ her, and you let her escape.”

 _Clack_.

“How do you know?” Keith bit back a groan, frustrated at his own bullshit. Why was he arguing with Lance that he’d have killed Wupa if he’d had the chance? Why couldn’t he just be satisfied that Lance believed in him?

Lance rolled his eyes. “You held your own against fucking Lotor, I think you could’ve taken one spiky rebel. But you didn’t want to.”

They circled each other, waiting for the other to make a move.

“That doesn’t mean other Galra will show mercy,” Keith said. “I had you—I knew I wouldn’t have been able to look you in the eye after. I—” Keith gritted his teeth and took a shot at Lance’s knees. “My morality shouldn't be dependent on you."

Lance stumbled, muttering, “Fucking Allura.” He struck out at Keith’s side. “You don’t think you’re giving me too much credit, pinning all your good deeds on me? You don’t think you’re a better person than that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Keith, you could’ve killed her, and I’d never have known,” Lance said. “But you didn’t, because you’d have felt guilty, which is a normal thing to experience after killing people. Or even _thinking_ about killing people.”

“Then stop thinking about Galra as people,” Keith retorted.

He reeled back, chest heaving with exertion. “But what if any of them are like you? Or the Blade of Marmora? If they just had the chance—”

“You can’t risk your life on the potential of a stranger, Lance. And I can’t—”

He couldn’t put the lives of Galra above the people they were hurting. Galra had enough chances, enough advantages; they didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt from Voltron.

Keith knew how they worked, knew exactly how deeply they were convinced they were right.

Lance was too optimistic for his own good.

“The Galra loyal to Zarkon have done terrible things,” Keith said. “ _I’ve_ done terrible things, things I need to make up for. And granting mercy to other Galra? Offering peace when I _know_ they can’t change over the course of one conversation? That’s not… fair. To anybody this war has hurt, or that I’ve hurt. Do you get it?”

Lance wiped sweat off his forehead with his arm. “So we’re just gonna keep killing them,” he said dully, “even if they might be able to change.”

Keith’s mouth tightened. “It’s not our responsibility to spare Galra, it’s to protect people. It’s not our fault the Galra are always in the way of that.”

Lance looked at him for a long moment before dropping his gaze. “Okay, sorry. You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

He shrugged. He hadn’t really thought about it since he’d first got to the castle. In a way, he’d made that decision the second he’d left the prison ship with Lance. And when he put more thought into it, it hadn’t been a difficult choice. Any other Galra certainly weren’t putting any effort into deciding whether they’d kill Keith if they saw him again.

“I’m sure it must’ve been hard, making that decision,” Lance continued. “And now I’m questioning how you’re treating your people—”

Keith flinched like his words were an electric shock. “They’re not my people.”

“I just meant you were with them so long—”

His nostrils flared. “It doesn’t matter.”

Something huge inside his chest wanted to burst; he couldn’t put words to the breadth of his feelings.

Because he was still Galra, he was never getting away from that, or what he’d done, and it was lying to act otherwise, but he still wanted to cut the Galra from him like a diseased limb, swear his fealty to humans and Voltron, and maybe, _maybe_ make up for what he’d done.

“And you don’t owe any of them a chance, Lance.” Keith’s hands were fisted at his sides, pole on the floor long forgotten. “Not when they’d kill you in a heartbeat. Can you remember that next time?”

He nodded, swallowing hard. “I’ll try. I’m sorry.”

Keith swiped his hair off his forehead. “You don’t have to apologize—”

Lance caught his hand and twined their fingers together, an achingly tender gesture when Keith’s chest wanted to explode. “I know, it’s just hard to stop thinking about.”

“You got over it, though,” Keith said quietly, referring to Lance almost boring a hole straight through the soldier into Keith.

He shrugged. “He was gonna hurt you. You were only in that position because of me, and then… then I went way overboard. I won’t do that again, either.”

“It was better than you doing nothing,” Keith said, trying to assuage his guilt.

Lance’s face tightened, surely imagining what would’ve happened if he _had_ done nothing.

“Even though it would’ve been fine,” Keith rushed to add.

“Not really,” he said, inner frustration tearing up his words. “That could’ve been a disaster. I mean, a way bigger one. And it would’ve been all my fault—”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t do it on purpose. You’re doing all you can to do better. That’s what matters, right?”

That’s what he kept telling Keith.

He dropped his face into the crook of Keith’s neck with a hopeless groan. “It’s different when it’s me.”

“No it’s not,” Keith muttered.

He ran his palms up his back, steady and soothing. At least that was his intention, and maybe it worked, because Lance leaned into him, bunching his fists in the back of Keith’s sweaty shirt to keep him close.

It terrified him, the emotions that welled when Lance reached for him like that. The way his chest ballooned when Lance crawled into his arms at night. Keith was so achingly enamoured with this boy it hurt.

Lance dragged his head up and tilted his forehead against Keith’s, like he could read his thoughts and responded in kind. His eyes were big and deep and still a little bloodshot.

His warm breath puffed against Keith’s lips. “Keith.”

And, well. Keith could take a hint, and he wasn’t near emotionally stable enough to think better of it.

Lance hummed into his mouth when Keith kissed him, his plush lips giving against his. They eased into each other, the last tensions of the day finally draining as they soaked each other in.

It just felt right, bodies linked like chain, hearts thudding together, Keith’s fingers winding into Lance’s hair. He hadn’t understood the extent of Lance’s ache for touch until he had the luxury of reaching for Lance whenever he wanted. He couldn’t imagine having this and then losing it.

He followed Lance’s mouth when Lance pulled back, just far enough to speak. “We said we were waiting.”

Keith sighed through his nose, refusing to open his eyes. “Allura’s never gonna like me, Lance.”

He nodded against his forehead. “You know I’ve been thinking about that? And that’s so defeatist. And I don’t want to start _this_ …” He kissed the corner of Keith’s mouth, “by giving up.”

Which was so very _Lance_ , and he really didn’t expect anything less.

“Okay,” he agreed, though he was still half-chasing Lance’s lips as Lance leaned back.

Lance squeezed his hips. “You ready to go to bed?”

“Well I don’t feel much like sparring anymore.”

He gasped in faux shock. “What? Keith doesn’t feel like sparring? What have I done to you?”

His chest warmed seeing that familiar teasing spark light return to Lance’s eyes. “Y’know, one of these days I’ll be able to kiss you just to make you stop talking.”

He winked. “Can’t wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, these boys. Insert *marge simpson 'kids, can you lighten up a little'.jpeg* here. I hope everybody loves moral quandaries and unanswerable questions! At least they kissed, right??  
> Anyway, next week is a new POV! I feel like this one will be pretty obvious, but you guys can go ahead and guess!  
> Lemme know what you thought of the chap!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! As always, thank you for all your feedback! Sorry this chapter's a little late, but I got a bit of a cold and was barely coherent yesterday.  
> So, as some of you guessed, this chapter's POV is Allura!! It's basically a bunch of vignettes looking into how she's been dealing throughout the fic--hopefully it'll give some insight into what's been going on with her.  
> Enjoy!

Allura’s life had been a whirlwind of emotions since they rescued Lance. She’d been expecting nothing but relief, but Keith ruined that.

Of course it started with distraught horror, that a Galra soldier had Lance so thoroughly tricked. Lance thought Keith needed saving, that he _deserved_ a rescue from his own people.

“This is ludicrous.” Keith and Lance were both in the healing pods, and Allura was in a room far away from that Galra, pacing in front of Shiro. “This is unthinkable.”

Shiro scratched the back of his neck in that annoying human way, a precursor to an awkward apology. “He’s the red paladin, Allura.”

“He is not.” Her foot was lifted off the ground before she fully registered the movement, and then it was already in the air, so she slammed it to the floor in a manner uncomfortably reminiscent of a childish stomp. “This is a trick, he’s tricking us, tricking Lance—how can you let that Galra do this to him?”

“I’m not saying I trust him entirely, but they’ve obviously formed a bond—”

Her hands curled into fists. “He’s manipulating Lance—”

He cut her off with a snapped, “Then why did Red save him?”

She stepped forward, a reply hot on her tongue, but he was already backing off.

Stress had infected them all while Lance was gone, stretching them tight and tired as they planned a rescue. And now instead of dissipating with his return, that tension and worry bubbled over thanks to that _Galra_ , so none of them could relax.

So Allura bit her tongue, didn’t rise to the bait of a fight, because Shiro was already checking his tone.

“I just mean,” he tried again, much more measured. “You’re the one who’s always saying that the lions recognize something special in the paladins. If we question Red, then we question all the lions, and that’s not good for—for any of them. We’re here because we were chosen, right? We can’t doubt that now.”

Allura was hearing the words, she was understanding the meaning, but she couldn’t believe they were coming out of his mouth.

He was letting a Galra on the ship because morale would go down if he didn’t? He was signing off on Keith tricking Lance so the team wouldn’t start doubting themselves?

_HE’S GALRA._

The argument vibrated through every atom of her being.

The doors slid open and Coran ambled in, unaware of the shaking rage within her.

His arms were overflowing with Keith’s Galra gear. “I thought I’d give these a wash for him while he’s healing.”

“I’ll fight him,” Allura said vehemently. “He should have to fight for the right to stay with us.”

She would not let him win.

“Er…” Coran raised his brows at Shiro, the two sharing a look before Coran decided on a response. “Let’s have a good long think on that, Princess. We don’t want to upset Lance.”

She sucked her teeth. She was having extreme difficulty reconciling the fact that hurting a Galra would negatively affect Lance.

She couldn’t wrap her head around this incomprehensible puzzle, two pieces of information that wouldn’t click no matter how hard she tried.

She snatched the amour and sword from Coran. “I’ll handle this,” she said, marching straight to the incinerator.

If everyone was so intent on making him a paladin, he wouldn’t need his Galra things anyway.

 

Helpless, as she listened to her friends, the only family she had left, welcome Keith at the debriefing dinner.

Even after he admitted to leaving Lance alone in that cell for weeks, for murdering their allies and countless other innocents through his life.

Her throat closed up, hands fisting as she watched a catastrophe play out in front of her eyes.

The way Lance leapt to Keith’s defense at every turn, hackles up for the enemy who’d kept him locked up, made her stomach churn.

Why wouldn’t he let her help him?

Why hadn’t she saved him sooner?

Her lips twisted as Keith found Lance’s hand and squeezed, the simple gesture easing the tension in Lance’s shoulders.

She’d failed him. That Galra had won.

 

Shock, when she found out that Lance and Keith were sleeping together at night. And Shiro had no problem with it. The two of them alone together, for hours on end, Lance vulnerable and sleeping in the arms of a Galra? Was nobody else worried about how easy it would be for Keith to slice Lance’s throat open while he slept?

“Doesn’t it concern you?” Allura asked Hunk, fists shoved into the folds of her skirt to keep them from shaking.

“I mean, I don’t love it,” Hunk said, sitting at the kitchen counter. “But I don’t think he’d try anything with Lance when he was sleeping, when we all know they’re together all night. We’d know what he did, and then where would he be?” He swallowed a spoonful of food goo, grimacing as it went down. “If he’s got a devious plot, it has to be smarter than that, right?”

She nodded slowly. That made sense. Keith was obviously a master manipulator, and taking out his biggest ally when he’d be the only suspect wouldn’t make any sense.

“But wouldn’t you feel better if Lance stayed with you?” Allura asked, desperate for a better option.

“He has, a few times.” He fiddled with his headband. “But—god, I feel so bad. He wakes up in the middle of the night, freaking out, and I can’t do anything because I’m freaking out too, y’know? So he’s crying, and I’m crying because he’s crying, and he’s getting more worked up when I’m supposed to be calming him down.” He slumped against the counter. “I got Keith in there last time, and he holds it together way better. He can talk him down.”

She squeezed the big boy’s shoulder as his eyes misted. “It’s okay, Hunk.”

“I’m sorry, princess,” he mumbled. “I know I should be doing more—”

“No, no,” she hushed. “I’ll handle it, okay? I’ll make sure Lance is safe.”

So she took it upon herself to wake the two each morning, being the first to make sure that Lance was safe and sound after sleeping in the arms of the enemy.

Until she walked in on Lance sobbing incoherently, tears streaming and eyes glazed over, seeing something else entirely in her place and only getting more hysterical the longer she stood frozen in the doorway.

And Keith bared his teeth, arms wrapped around Lance’s shaking shoulders like a mother lion protecting its young, and snarled, “Allura, get the hell out!”

 

Shaken, and a little indignant, when Keith came to her later that day, figurative tail between his legs, to apologize for his reaction. Lance had attempted to do the job for him earlier, but Allura insisted it hadn’t been Lance’s fault.

She had _not_ been implying that Keith needed to apologize to her personally, but it was happening anyway.

“He would’ve been like that with anybody,” Keith went on, eyes on the ground.

“Like _what_?” Allura asked, her words hard as granite.

His dark gaze lifted to hers. “His hallucination. He thought you were a guard taking him to the battle arena.”

“ _Me_?” Heat rose in her chest. He was accusing _her_ of causing Lance distress? “You’re the Galra!”

His mouth tightened. “Hallucinations don’t have to make sense.”

Apparently not. Because it was _Keith_ who let Lance suffer, who allowed him to become so traumatized that he couldn’t recognize his friends, but would seek protection in a Galra’s arms.

She inhaled through her nose, letting a few moments pass as she gathered her composure.

“Is that all?” she asked, clipped.

He nodded. “Yes, just…. sorry.”

“You’re dismissed.”

He snapped his heels together, started to lift his fist to his chest, but then yanked it back down in an aborted Galra salute.

He scrambled off, probably to avoid the fire raging under her skin.

How dare he look so small? So intimated and cowardly when she knew what he was capable of. He was anything but weak, no matter how cowed he managed to look around her.

“He’s trying to respect you, princess,” Coran said when she brought it up later on. “That’s all.”

She looked out across the dark depths of space, imagined Keith’s black gaze sucking up all the light in a room. “It’s… unsettling. He’s lying.”

“About what?”

“Everything,” she tossed out. “And I don’t understand how you can just… accept it.”

“I didn’t come to this decision without a fair bit of thought,” he said. And he’d talked to her about it before, a dozen times. It didn’t make this any easier. “But I took into account what your father would’ve wanted—”

“You can’t know,” Allura cut in heavily, “what my father wanted. Because he is not here. He was killed by Galra and thousand years ago.”

Even though it felt like barely a blink of an eye had passed since his arms had last been wrapped around her.

Coran opened his mouth, tugged on his moustache, and then shook his head. “I won’t argue with you about this anymore, Allura. Getting you to change your mind before you’re ready has always been like wrangling gorkeries. Arduous and messy, and you end up with a chunk bit out of you for the trouble.”

“I am not a gorkery!” She flung a hand at the door, at the danger lurking in their ship. “He is a Galra and I’m only trying to protect us.”

“I know, Princess.”

Even Coran, who had as much reason to distrust the Galra as Allura, was not on her side.

He should know better. He’d trusted a Galra once. So had her father.

So he should know— _he should know_ —

Her nails bit into her palms.

Zarkon was what happened when you put your faith in Galra.

_Keith isn’t Zarkon_ —it was her father’s voice that echoed through her mind. Would he hold this bitter grudge against all Galra if he were in her place? If they'd killed her instead, and he'd been the one to live?

She imagined he would, that it would have changed him like it changed her. But the man she remembered was forgiving, and Coran was following his living example, rather than the vengeful ghost she clung to.

She’d never more keenly missed that hologram version of Alfor than now. If she could just have some guidance—validation that she was right, or an explanation of why she should give in.

She wanted her father. She wanted Keith to pay for what his people had done to Alfor, to her home, and what they were _still_ doing, across the universe.

But she couldn’t even get him off her ship.

 

It was a bitter vindication that claimed her when Keith returned from his first test mission and was responsible for Pidge getting injured.

“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” Allura threw her arms in the air, a weight lifting from her chest. Shiro said in the hangar that Keith would stay, but that couldn’t possibly be the end of it. “We tried it, he failed. That’s all. Are there any uninhabited planets in this quadrant, or should I do a search?”

Shiro sunk into his chair on the bridge. “I thought you were going to give him a chance after I told you that Keith convinced Lance not to let himself die in that battle arena?”

“I said I would take it in account and think about it.” She crossed her arms. “That doesn’t excuse him choosing his own quest of revenge over watching out for Pidge.”

He leaned his head against his prosthetic hand, half-covering his eyes as he released a long-suffering sigh. “We’re not sending him away, Princess.”

Heat rose in her chest, hot as the ship’s engines right before she sent it through a wormhole.

He wasn’t even offering her the dignity of a rebuttal.

This puzzle grew more confounding by the day, like the pieces weren’t from the same set, not even the same world—like trying to merge two pieces from a harmless Earthen child’s puzzle with the proper Altean version. None of what was happening made _sense_.

She opened her mouth, ready to fight until she ran out of breath, but Shiro… he wasn’t looking at her. He was slumped over, resignation sloughing off every inch of him.

 “Do you even want him here?” Allura asked lowly.

“He’s the red paladin,” he said. “And he’s trying, he’s really trying.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“What I _want_ is to go home.” He finally met her gaze, exhaustion pulling at the bags under his eyes. “We need a red paladin to do that. And Keith’s the only one of us who’s fought to be here, instead of being thrown into it. So can you cut him some slack?”

Though what it really sounded like was _Can you cut me some slack? Please, Allura? I’m so tired._

And her temper fizzled. Tears bubbled to the surface instead.

She left the room.

Allura wasn’t making this difficult on purpose. Shiro knew that, right? This was all Keith’s fault, for showing up here, for wedging himself into their lives as a crucial piece in saving the universe. It wasn’t her damn fault he was Galra, that he didn’t belong here, that he was ruining everything.

She ran into Lance in the corridor, and he did a double-take when he saw her face.

“Allura?” he said gently. “What’s up?”

Lance and her had barely talked since they’d rescued him. He was there but he wasn’t, always wrapped up in the enemy, glaring at her whenever she dared speak the truth. She longed for the friendship they once had, the one she’d thought she’d get back easy as breathing when he returned.

But instead there was Keith.

She roughly wiped at her eyes. “Nothing you want to hear about.”

“No, hey, try me—” His lips tugged down. “Is it about Keith?” he asked with a noted drop in sympathy.

Her throat was thick as she gulped down her feelings. The hopelessness, the indignation, the fear that Lance was putting his trust in a trickster that would only stab him in the back.

“It’s nothing all of you aren’t tired of hearing,” she dismissed. “What about you? How are you, Lance?”

“Me? I’m great,” he said. “Just great.”

She tried in vain to smile. “Great.”

Allura understood Lance’s side, of course. Latching onto the only person who showed him a modicum of kindness for months. It was to be expected, the way he’d clung to Keith like a child scared to lose their favourite toy.

What Allura couldn't believe was that his behaviour had continued so long after Lance was back with people who cared about him. How was that Galra’s hold on him so tight?

And how was the rest of the team falling for it?

Every time she saw Lance scratch Keith’s ears like a harmless cat, or Pidge tug on Keith’s sleeve for input on Galra tech, Allura wanted to scream. It was all a trick. It had to be.

 

Cold fear trickled down her spine seeing the ugly purple bruise circling Lance’s wrists.

“What—what’s that?” Allura asked as the team sat down to dinner.

Lance smiled, tugging his sleeves down casually. “Got a bit carried away in training, nbd.”

“What?”

“No big deal.” He smiled again, picked up his fork and started up a conversation with Hunk.

Not Keith, because Keith wasn’t at dinner. He’d made himself scarce over the last few days. Allura had assumed it was because he was avoiding consequences after what he did to Pidge. Now her stomach curdled with a potential new reasoning.

She was right.

Pidge sat cross-legged on her bed, gnawing on the inside of her cheek as Allura paced in front of her. The mice were lined up on Pidge’s dresser, heads swiveling as they followed Allura’s moves.

“This was deliberately hidden from me,” Allura seethed. “He’s tricked all of you—”

Pidge spread her hands. “Nobody’s been tricked. He didn’t do it on purpose. Have you seen him lately? He feels so bad—”

“Because he was finally found _out_!” Plachu ducked behind Platt as her voice rose. “How dare he expect our sympathy?”

Pidge opened her mouth, but Allura rushed on.

“After attacking Lance like that?” Her hands curled into fists. She had to do something. He could not stay here. He could not continue infiltrating their team like a disease. “This is how it starts. First some bruised wrists, then a black eye, and then he’ll push Lance out the airlock and we’ll all be too used to that behaviour to notice!”

Pidge rolled her eyes.

“This is serious, Pidge.”

She nodded, lips pressed together. “I know, but in the unlikely event that Keith knocks Lance out the airlock, I can assure you he’ll throw himself out to save him.” She spread her hands and said pointedly, “It’s not like he hasn’t done it before.”

Allura shook her head as she spun on her heel to continue her pacing. “You’re missing the point. This is exactly what I was afraid of when those two started sleeping together. He could do _anything_ to Lance—”

“He was going to leave.”

Allura ground to a stop. She was silent a long moment. “What?”

Pidge adjusted her glasses. “Last night, I caught Keith trying to sneak out, because he didn’t wanna hurt Lance and he thought we’d be better off without him.”

“We would be.”

“I made him stay,” Pidge said flatly.

“You—you made him stay?” Allura closed her eyes, parsing out the implications as her blood boiled. “He was going to leave, and the only reason he’s still here is because of _you_?”

“He is the red paladin.” She clapped with each syllable for emphasis. “He’s Lance’s friend. He’s _my_ friend. I fully believe Keith just had a nightmare. You’ve seen what Shiro does to pillows.”

“Lance is not a quiznacking pillow,” Allura snapped.

“I know that.” She stood up. On the mattress, so she could reach Allura’s eye line. “But Keith cares about the team and saving the universe, just like you. He cares about Lance. And if you seriously think Keith would _ever_ hurt Lance on purpose, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“I have been paying attention—”

“No. You’re willfully ignoring the situation. _You’re_ the one missing the point.”

“And what is your point?”

Pidge put her hands on her hips. “Ignoring the glaringly obvious fact that you refuse to acknowledge, the other thing is that Keith is just as fucked up as Lance. More, probably. Because you know he was raised as a child soldier, right? I dunno how it was on Altea, and I know it’s the norm for Galra, but on Earth, kids being soldiers is a goddamn tragedy. Because kids can’t fight back, they don’t have options, they’re too scared to say no, so they’ll go along with anything. And Keith’s half-human.”

The mice stared at Allura intently, waiting with baited breath for a response.

Allura pursed her lips, said quietly, “That doesn’t change what he’s done—”

“And he can’t undo it,” Pidge said. “It’s impossible. But he wants to be here, he wants to atone. And if undoing things in the past is the only way to get you to accept him, then fine. That’s never going to happen. And we’re gonna be a fractured team forever.”

Heat pulsed in her chest, streaming all the way down to her clenched fists. “Don’t make this my fault, Pidge. That Galra hurt Lance and none of you told me. Even if it was just a night terror, shouldn’t I be made aware of that? What if he got out of Lance’s room in that state? What if he attacked me? I would have no reason not to respond with lethal force.”

Pidge rubbed a hand over her mouth, for once an argument not sprouting directly out of her brain.

 “We _are_ still a team,” Allura continued, “and I need to be apprised of any potential threats to us. Accidental or not. As much as all of you hate it, I’m expressing my concerns so we’re all on the same page. I’m not hiding anything from any of you. I will be speaking to Shiro about this.”

And _Coran_. She couldn’t believe they’d unilaterally decided to keep her in the dark about something that could so easily affect the whole team.

“Fine,” Pidge finally said. “But please god do not jump down Keith’s throat about this, because if he leaves—Allura, Allura look at me—” Pidge grabbed Allura’s face and forced her to look her straight in her wide eyes. “If Keith runs away because of you, Lance will be devastated, and he’ll never forgive you.”

“I know,” she said, even though she still didn’t understand it. “I am well aware, thank you.”

So, against every single instinct driving her to confront Keith, she didn’t.

 

And then Keith went and saved Lance from a Galra soldier, and the ship of refugees rioted when they discovered Keith was a Galra, and their fear and anger and betrayal rushed over her through the comms, and Allura didn’t know what to feel.

She’d thought a lot about what Pidge said, that if the only way Allura could get over the things Keith had done was for him to have never done them. And that he was a child of war without options. And that his first real choice in life was to save Lance.

If she took all that at face value, if she could believe, like the others, that Keith really did just want to help, then by all means she should welcome him with open arms.

So she tried to believe it as she watched him train with the others, build comradery and give fighting tips, and laugh and joke, and her chest twisted, refusing to believe he deserved any of it.

And then… _The Starseeker_ happened. And she was slammed in the face with reality—that it wasn’t just about _her_ , or her team, but the whole universe hating half of who Keith was.

So even if Allura finally welcomed Keith, how were they supposed to deal with the universe?

“Princess,” Shiro said, a question evident in his tone. Which was reasonable, seeing as Allura was lingering in the hallway outside the lounge with a bowl of crunchy snack food, watching the other paladins surreptitiously through the window.

“Sorry.” Allura shoved the bowl into Shiro’s hands. “I was going to—I was thinking about joining them.”

“What’s stopping you?”

The look on Lance’s face every time his eyes landed on Keith.

“I don’t think Lance appreciate my presence,” Allura said instead.

 “He could, if you just…” Shiro sighed, looking through the window with Allura for another minute. “You know you don’t have to forgive every last Galra, right? You don’t even have to forgive _Keith_ , just—”

“Just what?” she asked tiredly. Keith was curled up on the couch, ears almost hidden in his hair, shoulders under his t-shirt smaller than his armour made him look. In this state he didn’t look any older than Lance or Hunk, and not very threatening at all. “He’s Galra. Those refugees turned on us as soon as they found that out.”

“Like I said in the debriefing, we’ll work on it.”

“How? And how—” She looked at the snack bowl, a poor attempt at a peace offering. “How am I supposed to fix this? Lance won’t even talk to me.”

“Because you keep saying the same thing. But worrying about how the universe perceives Keith is different than wanting him out of here.” Shiro waved the bowl at the door. “Tell Lance this. Tell _me_ about this. Have you changed your mind?”

She leaned against the wall, burying her fingers in her hair. “What good is it doing? Spending a quarter of every meeting arguing with Lance and Keith—” Lance and Keith, Keith and Lance, a package deal bleating in her head “—just for the sake of arguing? None of you ever agree with me, so where’s that getting us?”

He paused. “I never meant for it to feel like we were ganging up on you, Allura—”

“No, no, you all just happened to have the exact opposite opinion to mine.” She tilted her head against the wall. And it didn’t matter if they hadn’t _intended_ to leave her out, because that’s very much what happened. “It’s fine. I want to make this team work, but I’m at a loss as to _how_.”

Shiro’s face softened. “Talk to them. Tell them you want to work together instead of fighting. I promise it’ll be okay.”

Through the window, she watched as Keith nodded at something Lance was saying, fist clenching and unclenching on his thigh. Lance reached out and slipped his fingers through his to settle him.

She didn’t _get_ it. What was she missing?

“I’m still not sure if I trust him,” she said quietly.

“Then you can think about it some more. But this is progress, and I’m so relieved.”

She offered a small smile to the exhausted black paladin in front of her. “I’m not ready right now. But I’ll think about it.”

 

Allura did. 

Allura thought long and hard about why she couldn’t force these puzzle pieces together, twirling them in her mind, demanding that this situation finally click.

Late that night, she was walking through the castle’s halls, sleep not coming to her, when she saw the training room lights on.

She peered through the window in the door, unsurprised to find Lance and Keith together.

But.

But it felt like the first time she’d ever seen Keith. Soft and loose, wrapped in Lance’s embrace. Lance smiled at him, exhausted and aching and happy as Keith thumbed his cheek like he was something precious.

And he leaned in, and Lance did too.

And Allura realized she was looking at the puzzle all wrong, upside down and inside out.

Pidge was right. Allura really hadn’t been paying attention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope we can all empathize with Allura a bit better now. Further resolution with her to come with Keith POV next chapter, and finally finishing it up with Lance's!!  
> Lemme know what you thought!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy with the response from Allura's chapter!! Plenty of you guys were already sympathetic to her, but plenty of you were /not/ before that chapter lol, so I'm glad everybody enjoyed it!  
> Hope you enjoy this one, too! Keith POV again, because this chap was originally part of chap 10, before I wrote Allura POV and split the Keith POV in half. Lance is back in the last chapter lol.  
> Anyway, enjoy!

“It’s about using your attacker’s weight against them,” Keith explained to Pidge. “It’s really easy.”

“Says the guy with Galra strength.” Pidge wiped her bangs off her forehead, sweat making her hair stick up in all directions.  “I’ve yet to have my growth spurt—I can’t flip attackers three times my size over my back.”

“Yes you can,” he said. “Do you want me to show you with Hunk again?”

“ _No,_ ” Hunk called from across the training room. He was on his way out, still looking a little green. “No, she doesn’t.”

Keith shrugged apologetically at him before turning back to Pidge. He put his hand on her shoulder. “C’mon, one more try.”

“Fine,” she muttered the same time Hunk said, “Oh, hey, Allura.”

Keith’s attention snapped to the princess, who was striding toward Keith in her workout gear as Hunk slipped out.

“Can I speak with you privately?”

His world turned upside down.

Literally, because Pidge finally managed to flip him onto his back

He watched her face light up in triumph from his spread-eagled position on the mat. It faded as she narrowed her eyes at Allura. “About what?”

A valid question. Keith and Allura hadn’t spoken alone since his disastrous attempt at apologizing after she walked in on one of Lance’s night terrors.

“Nothing serious,” Allura assured her. Her gaze flicked to Keith, still shocked to stillness on the floor “I just want to talk. If that’s alright.”

“Yeah—yes.” Keith hopped to his feet. “Pidge, good job, uh—can we have the room?”

Pidge raised her brows at Allura, and the two of them seemed to have a whole conversation with one long look.

Keith waited patiently, not even trying to decipher the meaning.

“I guess,” Pidge finally said.

And then she left, and it was just Keith and Allura.

Neither seemed to know how to begin.

What did she want?

He couldn’t fathom.

Keith knew what _he_ wanted—for her to call off the probation so Lance could finally stop worrying about Allura kicking Keith off the ship.

He could say that. If Allura wanted to talk. One of them had to start, right?

And all he’d done so far was stay quiet, biting his tongue to keep Allura from acknowledging his presence and making her hate him even more. But it hadn’t worked.

Allura opened her mouth to speak.

Probably to reason with him, to convince him that leaving was best. Obviously Voltron couldn’t save the universe from the Galra with a Galra on the team.

Except Allura hadn’t even let him _try_.

Keith cut in before she could say anything. “Do you still want to fight me?”

She blinked, thrown off by the interruption. “Pardon?”

“Coran said you wanted to fight me when I first got here,” he said, regretting every word that came out of his mouth, but he was too far in to back out now. “Do you still want to?”

“I came here to talk.”

“You haven’t said anything.”

She crossed her arms, brow wrinkling. “I wanted to challenge you for your right to stay here. If you won, you could stay, but when I won, you’d leave.”

“Okay,” he found himself saying. “If you beat me and you really want me gone, I’ll leave.”

Part of him meant it—had already resigned himself to the fact that Allura would never accept him, and he should stop pushing and leave so Voltron could start their search for a better red paladin.

Other parts of him—his hands, going clammy; his heart, tripping over itself to catch up to his racing pulse—were already calling his bluff.

“Well.” She drummed her fingers against her arm contemplatively. “We’re already in the training room. I don’t see why we can’t spar.”

Keith still wanted to know what conversation she intended to have, but fighting always felt safer than talking, so he accepted the distraction.

Allura slipped the hilt of her sparring staff off her belt and expanded it to to full size.

As Keith turned to retrieve a staff of his own, Allura said, “Is there something wrong with your bayard?”

“It’s a, it’s a super sharp sword,” Keith said. He didn’t use it when he trained with anybody but Shiro.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

And then she smacked him in the ribs.

He jerked back, activating his bayard to block her next strike.

If she came here to talk, she must’ve decided to work up to it—she was unrelenting as she came after him, leaving no space for either of them to speak.

Especially after his eyes turned yellow. Allura came at him even harder, with all the power she’d used fighting when they escaped the Galra ship, but half the forethought. None of the restraint or precision that made each strike count.

The stakes were lower. It wasn’t Lance’s freedom on the line, just Keith’s future.

It didn’t take long to pick up her fighting style, so he could quit playing defense, desperately blocking her strikes, and fight back for real.

She almost looked like she was enjoying herself. Every time Keith managed to block a strike at the last second, when he had to dive out of the way of her whirling staff, her teeth dug into her bottom lip like she was biting down a smile.

“Tell me,” she began, sweat barely beginning to dot her brow. “Do you think you deserve to be here?”

His bayard struck her staff with a _clang. H_ e pressed in harder. “No.”

She surged forward, sending him stumbling away from her. He stared at her, dreading her response, but all she did was nod. “Go on.”

She wanted him to plead his case.

He gulped. “But I want to help. Whatever I can do to stop Zarkon, I’ll do it. And being part of Voltron seems like the best way.”

She seemed to digest that as they continued to spar. “The others think so as well. But I—” She ducked a swing of Keith’s sword. “You haven’t been telling the truth, Keith. Not lying just… I don’t know who you are.”

“Is that my fault?” Keith asked before he could stop himself.

Her canines flashed in a bitter smile. She didn’t quite answer, but she did respond, “I want to trust you, you know. I wish I could.”

So did Keith. But knowing him was asking a lot, since Keith wasn’t even sure who he was.

The differences between who he wanted to be, who he actually was, and what the Galra had raised him to be, were indistinguishable to him.

He backed off to gather himself, grab a breath. They circled each other, Allura’s steps light as a predator readying to pounce.

“You don’t want me to be who I really am,” he panted. “I don’t even want that. I know you don’t want this answer, but if you think I’m lying, it’s because I don’t know—I don’t _know_ … I’m still figuring myself out.”

He aimed a hit at her knees so he didn't have to look at her face. She blocked him, his blade sliding down her staff until he had to jump back to avoid her counterstrike.

“And is Lance helping?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I think so too.”

Treacherous hope set his heart beating faster.

“I think you love him,” fell from her lips like an accusation.

Her staff cracked against his ribs. She knocked him off her feet and he skidded across the mat on his ass.

She didn't like him lying. Telling the truth couldn't be worse.

“Yeah,” he huffed when he came to a stop.

She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, chest heaving. "No one..." She trailed off, quieter. "No one told me that."

Who would've told her? Why would anyone? Love wasn't something you said, it was something you expressed with action.

But if she thought he was bad for Lance, then she wouldn't have noticed his actions anyway.

"So how’d you know?" he asked.

Allura looked at the doors to the training room, leaving her in profile. Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat. "I saw you two in here. Last night."

For a second, Keith didn’t follow.

Then his eyes bulged.

“I didn't mean to intrude—" she tacked on.

"We weren't—it’s not—we didn't mean to hide it. I mean, we weren't hiding anything, we haven't—we’re not in that type of relationship right now, we just—” He stumbled over his tongue, though she hadn't resumed a defensive stance. Didn’t look ready to drop kick him across the room. “We're not hiding. We're not lying. We're waiting.”

“For what?”

He lifted a shoulder, rusty like his muscles were fighting against him. He shouldn’t be moving. He shouldn’t be talking. He wasn’t coming back from this.

“Keith,” she said gently, finally looking back to him. She crouched to meet his eye. “The others know, don’t they?”

“We didn’t tell them.”

“But they noticed.”

Keith nodded.

Allura sighed. “I suppose, looking back, you two weren’t exactly subtle.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, mouth dry. “We figured you wouldn’t approve.”

“No, I understand.”

But _what_ did she understand? What was she going to do?

She’d won the fight. It was up to her what happened to him now.

If she kicked him out, he’d have to join the Blade of Marmora. Fear flooded him at the thought of having to play nice with more Galra. They wouldn’t be any less strict than the Galra working for Zarkon, unflinching in their beliefs.

He’d be fighting for a good cause, but he’d be right back to being a small and faceless soldier within in an army. Struggling to prove his worth day after day. He’d fall into a hard shell of himself, the one he’d been wearing his whole life.

He’d just started to like the person he could be on this team, with Lance.

Desperation clawed up his chest.

He didn’t _want_ to go.

“Look, I’m sorry I’m not the red paladin you wanted,” Keith said, throat tight. “And that you weren’t really given a choice about me being here. But I don’t have a lot of options, either. I can either stay here, go to the Blade of Marmora, or live in hiding—from the Galra and everybody else who hates Galra.”

“I’m aware.”

He rested his elbows on his knees, picking his words carefully. “I—I don’t know if I’m good for Lance. Lance thinks I am. I think the rest of the team does. But they want this to work—for Voltron, but also for Lance. They want him to be happy. Your concerns are bigger than that.”

“I care about Lance’s happiness,” she argued. “But that Galra prison—what it did to him… He was in no place to make characters calls when you arrived.”

Which was true, even if it was difficult to hear. Keith wanted so much to trust Lance’s gut when he said the Keith could be better, but every day was a battle to believe it.

“But he’s made significant progress," Allura continued, "and that’s at least in part to you.”

His heart skipped a beat. That was almost a compliment.

“What are you two waiting for, Keith?” Her tone hadn't lost its softness since she’d first told him that she saw them kissing last night.

It occurred to him that if she were  _really_ mad, if she'd found them together to be entirely despicable, she would have brought it up at breakfast in front of everybody.

“You,” Keith said in a small voice. “Your approval, I guess.”

She dropped her head. Then she stood.

She held out her hand. “Stand up, Keith.”

He tentatively took her hand and she helped him to his feet. He did need the help; his knees felt like water.

Allura looked him over one last time. A drop of sweat crawled down Keith's back.

“I owe it to Lance to give you a chance," she said. "I owed it from the start—though I still think allowing you to stay was more than gracious—”

Keith swallowed a breathless, shocked chuckle.

“I want you to have the freedom to grow into someone we can be proud to work with,” she said sincerely. “I want you and Lance to be happy. I want to move past my… presumptions so we may strengthen as a team. What do you think?”

His breath left him in a shot, like he’d been punched in the chest. “Really?”

She nodded. “I think you’ve proved yourself enough.”

If his knees were water before, he couldn’t even _feel_ them now. It was like he was floating two feet above the floor, completely separated from reality. He couldn’t believe Allura was accepting him.

Keith nodded, before he hastily added, “Yeah. Yes, of course, Princess. Thank you.”

She grinned sharply. “Don’t thank me yet.” She dodged forward, staff spinning in her hands. “With all your time spent training, I expected a better-matched opponent.”

He recognized the spark in her eyes, the friendly, teasing lilt in her tone that hadn’t been directed to him once since he’d arrived. She meant it. He’d made it.

Keith offered a tentative smile of his own. “Maybe I was going easy on you.”

A short laugh escaped her. “Lance is right. You _are_ funny.”

And then she came at him with everything she had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, another training room scene. Because conversations in action are immediately more interesting, right? Right??  
> Anyway I can't believe this is almost done!! Thank you for everybody who's left comments and kudos, because I wouldn't have enjoyed this process half as much without your support!  
> Lemme know what you thought!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooo so I split the last chapter in 2, because it got a bit long and also there was a good place to halve this bad boy. (Also I never liked that this was going to be 13 chapters lol. I'm not superstitious but I am a little stitious.)  
> Final chapter will be up in just a few minutes, though, never fear!  
> And, back at it again with Lance POV!

Lance yawned as he wiped down the inside of a healing chamber with a rag. They weren’t comfortable to hang out in; cold and hard and his now smelled like a mixture of space bleach and medicine. “Remind me again why I was dragged to clean these things?”

Coran’s voice echoed in the healing chamber next to Lance’s. “Well, it was Keith who used that pod, wasn’t it?”

“So shouldn’t _he_ be cleaning it out?”

“I’ll be sure to put him on the chore chart.” Which wasn’t sarcasm at all. Foolishly, Lance had explained the concept of a chore chart to Coran, and he’d gobbled it up. Lance wasn’t scheduled to clean out the healing pods today, though. Lance was kind of expecting to be allowed to chill after his freak out at on the _Starseeker_ the day before yesterday, but Coran had plucked him out of the training room, leaving Keith, Pidge and Hunk to train.

Shiro and Lance had talked about Lance’s flashback, and Shiro’s instructions were to take it easy, which Lance didn’t mind as long as it meant he was still allowed to do some sort of training. He wasn’t going to get any better handling stressful combat if he couldn’t even practice.

Had they decided he was more useful as a janitor than a paladin?

“Lance, are you listening?” Coran asked. He poked his head out of the healing pod he was in to look down at Lance sitting listlessly on the floor. “What’s the matter, my boy? You don’t like cleaning with old Coran anymore? I know it’s not the most exciting, but it needs to get done.”

Lance nodded, sitting up out of his slouch. “I’m fine, I just--tell me the truth. Am I cleaning instead of training because of what happened on the _Starseeker_?”

Coran crouched to meet his eye, limbs springy as elastics. His voice was softer, more serious, than usual. “I don’t follow.”

He picked at a stray thread on his jeans. “I’m here to be a paladin. I can’t do that if I can’t fight.”

“But you _can_ fight. And you’re not just a paladin. You’re our friend, our family, and we’re here to help you, no matter what.”

“We’re supposed to be saving the universe.”

“You’re part of the universe, aren’t you?”

Lance scrubbed a hand over his faces. “Aren’t we wasting time?”

“Absolutely not. We’re a team, Lance. We can’t do this without you. And we’ve all seen how much you’ve improved since you got back.” He smoothed down his moustache, taking a long moment to look at Lance. Finally he said, “But you’ll never return to who you used to be, and you shouldn’t feel bad about that. Do you know that?”

Lance couldn’t get back who he was before. It was rough to hear and even harder to think, but if he was being honest, he knew that from the start. It was just so much more appealing chasing the perfect impossible than being stuck with who he’d become.

“I guess,” he said weakly.

Coran squeezed his knee. “Nothing to do anymore but move forward, whatever that means to you. Life doesn’t move backwards. Except for the Rashun people in Hydra Quenta 6. Their proximity to a rare xenoplaxa--” In a rare show of self-restraint, Coran cut himself off. “But that’s a story for another time, perhaps. Cleaning with me is not a punishment, I assure you. Have I helped?”

He nodded. “It’s just... hard.”

“I know. But you are strong. And we’re all here for you.”

And that meant a lot, that they’re weren’t getting tired of his shit, that they’d rather be there for him than toss him aside and look for a better blue paladin.

“Thanks, Coran.”

“Any time, my boy,” Coran said as he stood up. “Ready to finish these pods off?”

The room’s doors hissed open to reveal Allura.

“Lance.” She folded her hands in front of herself primly. “I was wondering if we could chat?”

Lance shared a look with Coran, who nodded.

“Sure,” Lance said sceptically.

Coran wiped his hands on a clean rag. “Princess, right on time. I presume everything went well?”

“Better than I expected,” she said.

Lance narrowed his eyes. “What…”

Allura was in her workout clothes. Her silvery hair stuck to her temples with sweat.

Keith was in the training room.

Lance let out a weird, purposeful _hmmm_ , and said, “What’s up, my dudes? Did a certain somebody take me out of the training room so a certain somebody else could confront Keith?”

“Everything’s fine,” Allura assured Lance, palms spread. “I just wanted to talk to him privately. Everything’s fine.”

Lance didn’t like this, he didn’t like this at all. Not the night after Keith and him had kissed. Had Allura seen? Had someone told her?

Coran put a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Go on with Allura. And let her speak, I think you’ll appreciate what she has to say.”

Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, still too stressed to reach proportionately. “Alright.”

He followed Allura into the hall.

“So uh, you keep saying everything’s fine,” Lance began. “Does that mean you weren’t just fighting Keith?”

Her lips parted, she tilted her head, and then shook it slowly. “I was. But we’ve worked through our differences.”

“And what does that mean?”

She stopped at a glass alcove displaying the splendor of stars all around them. Lance fidgeted with his sleeve as she considered the dark, glittering sky.

“Allura, what did—?”

“I regret the way I’ve made you feel since Keith joined us,” Allura said. “I’ve been a bad friend.”

Which wasn’t at all what he was expecting.

“I... what?”

“This isn’t quite an apology,” Allura continued slowly. “I stand by my judgement that caution was necessary when it came to Keith. But I wish I could’ve handled this situation better, for your sake.” She looked down. “We spent so long planning your rescue, and that stress increased instead of dissipating when you returned with Keith. I wanted you safe, Lance. And Keith felt so dangerous to me.”

Lance was pretty sure this was the most they’d said to each other since he’d got back from the prison, and that realization didn’t sit right in his gut. She wasn’t apologizing--which was more than fine--but she was still explaining it all like it was new information.

“I get it, Allura,” he said. “I absolutely get where you’re coming from. I--shit, I’ve been a bad friend, too. I never meant to make you feel like I don’t appreciate what you’re doing. But I couldn’t admit that you had a point, right? Or else you’d be even harder on Keith. And I’m all he’s got.”

She dropped her head, hard lines of her shoulder easing. “I know. I’ve been stubborn as a gorkery, but I was--afraid. Of so much.”

“Hey, me too.” He pulled her in for a hug. “And honestly, my sister would’ve done the exact same thing. You’re in good company.

She squeezed him tight, almost as tight as his sister’s hugs. “I hope we can mend our friendship.”

“Yeah, of course.” He closed his eyes, relaxing into her embrace. Some knotted part inside of him finally untwisted, relieved that the tension pushing them apart was finally behind them.

“And Lance,” Allura said as she pulled back. “You’re not all Keith has. He’s part of the team now. He has all of us.”

“Do you mean…” His breath caught on the hope rising in his throat.

She nodded. “Keith and I talked. I know what he means to you, and it’s clear he feels the same way. I never meant to stand in the way of your happiness.”

“Thank you,” he said, relief spilling through him. There was one thing that stuck out, though. “When you say what he means to me, though, uh…”

“He loves you,” she said, a ghost of a smirk hinting at her lips. “I presume you feel the same.”

Lance gaped.

“I didn’t realize this until last night,” she tacked on quickly. “I wasn’t aware—context would’ve been helpful, but I understand why you didn’t tell me—”

“Did _Keith_ tell you?” He couldn’t keep the squeak out of his voice. “That he—he feels that way about me?”

Her brows drew together in confusion. “I know why _I_ hadn’t noticed, but how could you possibly not see it?” Her face drained of colour. “Do you not feel the same way? Oh, I knew I should’ve talked to you first, I just wanted to bring you good news—”

“No—yes, I mean _yes_ I feel the same way, we just—we haven’t said that yet.”

But Keith had told _Allura_? What?

She laid a relieved hand against her chest. “Oh. Were you waiting for my approval to do that as well?”

“No. How much did he tell—” He stopped, the implications of the conversation finally catching up to him. “Wait, you said he’s part of the team, right? Like his probation is over? Like—like—”

Like there was nothing stopping Lance from striding right up to Keith and kissing him.

Allura smiled, more knowing than he’d like. “I can elaborate. But Keith was just going to shower when I left the training room--I’m sure he’s looking for you now.”

Lance bounced on his toes. “Thank you.” He grabbed her in one more quick hug. “Hey, could you do me a favour?”

“I’m sure I can manage.”

 

A few minutes later, he was bounding into the training room, spirits high. Three of his favourite people were chatting in the middle of the room.

“Hunk, Pidge, hello!” Lance made a beeline for Keith, who was watching his approach with a wide-eyed expectancy.

Lance grabbed the front of his shirt and reeled him in for a resounding kiss. Keith stretched to meet him more firmly, spreading his fingers across his chest.

“Guess that talk with Allura went well,” Pidge said dryly.

Lance pulled away with a _smack_ , grinning big, eyes still only for Keith. “I got us a date.”

“Oh?” Keith said, a pleased smile curling his lips.

“Congratulations,” Hunk butted into their romantic moment with a whisper.

Lance cut him a flat look.

Hunk shrugged widely. “Well, when was I supposed to say it? You didn’t give me an opening.”

Lance rolled his eyes.

“So where’re you going?” Pidge cut in. “Is there a space Chipotle around here, or…?”

“It’s a surprise.” Lance took Keith’s hand. “Come on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, Keith and Lance stuff in the next chapter I prooomise. I just wanted to touch on Lance's PTSD situation in this, and then go straight into the romance to wrap up, because that's how that works, right? (I never said I was great at pacing or tone lol)  
> Next chapter up in the next few minutes!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end! I just want to thank everybody, again, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this and commenting, and kudosing and chatting with me on tumblr. It would not have been half as rewarding without your feedback!  
> Also, heads up for a lil bit of smut in this chapter.

Lance and Keith flew through the sky in Red. Two huge moons brightened the night, reflecting off the smooth surface of the ocean, so dark it looked black in the silvery moonlight.

Lance directed Keith to their own little island, with twisty trees rising from stark green cliffs that might’ve been massive chunks of emerald.

“Oh, wow,” Lance said, leaning against the back of Keith’s chair. He hadn’t realized it would be night time. “This is so fucking romantic.”

Keith side-eyed him as they landed, a small smirk tugging on his lips.

Their boots sunk into sand once they stepped off the ship. The beach stretched down the coast for a couple hundred feet until it reached the cliffs, which the surf crashed against leisurely.

“Do you like it?” Lance asked.

“It’s beautiful.”

Of course that didn’t mean Keith would take his helmet off until he investigated the surroundings. Wouldn’t let Lance take his off, either.

“The castle database says the air is breathable and the water is swimmable,” Lance said, almost laughing that their date had to start off with a scientific investigation. “What more do you want?”

“That data is ten thousand years old.” Keith shoved a metal rod sticking out of some gadget into the waer.

“So?”

“So? Planets change, Lance. Doesn’t Earth?”

“Well… yeah,” he admitted, unable to argue that point.

Keith stuck his gadget into the glimmering green sand. “Is this anything like it?”

“It’s comparable. There’s water, which is a big deal.” Lance crouched next to Keith and plunged his hand into the sand, grains probably getting stuck into all the nooks and crannies of his glove. “Some nice sand. We only got the one moon, though.”

Keith nodded. He checked out the dirt on the edge of the beach, making little humming noises as he worked.

Lance followed, peeking over Keith’s shoulder as he looked over his results. “You’re cute when you’re concentrating.”

“Huh?” He twisted around, the twin moons easily highlighting his blush. “Sorry, force of habit, I guess. All those recon missions.”

“You were checking if the planets were inhabitable?”

“Sometimes. In case our data was out of date and they decided the ship scanners needed a second opinion.” He rolled his eyes. “Just another way to try to get rid of me. I didn’t mind, though,” he added in response to Lance’s frown. “It was the only time I got to fly the pod ships by myself. I learned all my best moves on those missions.”

“Don’t brag too much, Red might get jealous.”

Keith tossed a concerned glance at Red before his little gadget beeped. “Okay, it’s safe.”

Lance yanked off his helmet. “ _Finally_.”

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back, letting the sea breeze weave through his hair, dive into his lungs. He always forgot how much he missed fresh air.

“Did come here just to breathe?” Keith asked.

“ _No_ ,” he said, kicking off his boots. “And if you keep sassing me, you’re not getting your present.”

“I don’t need a present.”

Lance pulled a paper out of his utility belt. “It’s not really from me.”

Keith unfolded the paper, displaying a detailed illustration of the princess' face, along with her name written in English and Altean.

Keith's brows rose, a soft surprise claiming his features. “Is that—did you—is this from Allura?”

Lance smiled. "Sure is. She told you you're part of the team now, right?"

"Yeah, but um… Wow.” He slipped his helmet off, examining the paper closer.

"Not like you haven't been anyway, but now it's official, and you know what that means." He wriggled his brows as he shucked off the rest of his armour, down to his swim trunks.

Night air nipped at Lance's skin, and the water would only be colder, but Lance floated above the discomfort when Keith tore his attention away from the picture to look at Lance. Face familiar and open, so hopeful it might break him.

Lance swayed closer. His fingers brushed the back of Keith’s hand.

Keith’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “We get to swim?”

He breathed a laugh. “That’s definitely scheduled.” He rapped at his chest armour. “You need to lose that, though.”

“On it.”

Lance helped him pluck his armour off, dropping it to the sand with his own.

The water was brisk, but Lance ran in until the water reached his thighs.

Keith yowled when he put one foot in, scowling when Lance burst out laughing. “It’s cold!”

Lance opened his arms. “I’ll keep you warm, babe.”

He crossed his arms, kicking water at him.

Lance lifted his brows in challenge.

Keith realized his mistake a second too late. “Lance, no—!”

Lance threw himself into the water in front of Keith, splashing the hell out of him. He cackled, swimming away from Keith’s outrage with big kicks, sending even more water his way.

“You’re gonna have to get in to catch me,” Lance called, backstroking further away from the beach.

Keith dove in without a second’s hesitation. Lance laughed as Keith raced to catch up with him, buoyed and happy as they chased each other through the water, dunking each other and splashing until they ran out of breath.

They ended up, as usual, wrapped in each other’s arms, feet kicking gently in the water to stay afloat.

Lance tilted his head forward, taking what he saw as the next logical step in their night.

Except Keith ducked out of his arms into the water, popping back up a few feet away.

“Keith?” Lance said. “What’s up, buddy? Is this not romantic enough? Should I serenade you? _When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s amore_ —”

“Are you sure you wanna be with me?”

Lance’s jokey singing stuttered to a stop. Goosebumps pricked his flesh.

“I— _yeah_ ,” he said. He drifted a bit closer to shore, so he could dip his feet in the gloopy sand, grounding himself just a little in the vast ocean. “Do—do you?”

The water hung at their shoulders, skin warmer within it than exposed to the chilly air.

“You haven’t changed your mind?” Keith asked. His ears lay flat against his slick hair, soaking up the warmth of his scalp. Water droplets shuddered down his lavender skin. “You... you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m the worst thing that ever happened to you. I keep waiting for you to realize that.”

His heart constricted. “Keith, no. You, specifically, are not. Okay? You’re not.” He found his hand under the water. “And I’m only the best thing because you’ve had a sad, miserable life so far.”

“So?” He wiped his free hand over his face. “I’ve never been more grateful for anything than meeting you, and we only met because my people tortured you.”

“Hey.” Lance cradled his cheek, softly demanding Keith’s full attention. His wet lashes pulled into points, glistening silver under the moon. “They’re not your people. I’m your people. Voltron, the team. We’ve got a connection that goes beyond me getting captured. If we hadn’t met then, we’d have met somewhere else—”

He dropped his gaze. “And we’d have killed each other.”

“No.” Lance had thought about this before; he didn’t know why he assumed Keith hadn’t, too. He waited until Keith met his eyes again to speak. “You remember the first thing you said to me?”

He nodded into Lance’s palm, though it took him a few moments to speak. “‘Why do you look like me?’”

“Yup. And I think you’d have said the same thing whether you saw me in battle or at a space mall. Because you’re more than what they made you, and you always knew that. You saw yourself in me. You saw the human. And you wanted it.”

Keith drew in a deep breath, nosing into Lance’s palm ever so slightly. “Yeah?”

Lance broke the tension with, “Or, you were thinking ‘Golly, in all my travels I’ve never seen such an enchanting fella!’”

He snorted. “It was the first thing,” he said quietly. “But the second is true. I’ve never met anyone like you, Lance.”

“You’re making me blush.”

Keith knocked his forehead against Lance’s. “It’s true.”

Lance slipped his fingers into Keith’s hair at the base of his neck. “My life is better with you in it, Keith. You don’t have to worry about that.”

Keith closed the last inch between them and their lips met; soft, warm, slick with salty ocean water. They drifted closer, chests brushing, hearts beating in time. Keith’s palms slid up Lance’s back, urging him closer. As if Lance needed any prompting.

“Hey Keith?” Lance whispered against his lips.

He hummed in response

“I love you.”

He blinked slowly, brows furrowing over his big eyes. “Why are you telling me that?”

He cocked his head. Not really what he was expecting, especially after what Allura told him. “Because I _do_?”

“I know.”

“Okay?”

“Because you basically just said it.”

“ _Basically_ saying it isn’t the same as saying it, though. And I wanted you to know.”

“I do know,” Keith said, like this was a ridiculous, redundant conversation. “You show it every day.”

And that did something warm and fluttery to Lance’s chest, so he fell silent as Keith studied him, searching for something he thought he should be able to figure out on his own, just like he used to.

Keith traced Lance’s cheek, his nose, his jaw, leaving a trail of water in his wake. “From my understanding,” he said, picking his words with a great deal of care. “If you mean it, there’s no reason to say it, because you’re always proving it. Is it different for humans?”

Lance pressed his lips to Keith’s fingers, still lingering near his face. “A little. We like to do both.”

“That’s a waste of time.”

Lance smiled, affection eating him up inside. “Hey Keith?”

“What?”

“I know you love me.”

A smile crept over his features. He cupped the back of Lance’s neck and dragged his mouth to his. “If you love me you’ll let me get out of this water.”

“It’s not that cold.”

Keith wrapped his legs around Lance’s waist, weightless in the water and desperate to steal his body heat. “Lance, my toes are gonna fall off.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Lance laughed, kissing him as he carried him back to the beach.

Keith’s teeth were chattering by the time they were drying themselves off. “How is it even colder _out_ of the water?”

“Oh no.” Lance flung another, larger towel onto the sand. “Looks like we’ll have to huddle together for warmth.”

Keith sent him a flat look, yanking him in by the towel hanging around Lance’s neck. Lance gladly followed. They shared another open-mouthed kiss before he tugged Keith to the ground.

Lance ended up on top, so he grabbed the edge of the towel and flipped them over, setting Keith on top of him, both of them wrapped up like they were in a blanket.

Keith’s weight pinned Lance to the forgiving sand. The bare skin on skin contact chased away the ocean’s clinging frigidity.

Lance lifted a brow. “Ready to get steamy?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And you love me, so who’s really ridiculous here?”

Keith kissed him instead of answering, long and slow, luxurious and exploring. Lance got swallowed in the feeling, of Keith as close as he needed, of the encroaching coldness chased away by Keith’s body heat, his hands running up his sides, cradling his jaw, thumb brushing his ear and making Lance shiver up against him.

Lance tilted his head back, reveling in the moment, and Keith dropped kisses over his neck, chest, shoulders like he was something to be adored.

Keith nosed at his ear, warm breath streaming across Lance’s skin. “This is good, right?”

Lance grinned, hooking his legs around Keith’s waist and grinding against him. “Is _this_ good?”

Keith’s eyelids fluttered. A sinful groan left his swollen lips. “ _Lance_ …”

He looked up at him from under his lashes. “Yeah?”

Keith swore, taking Lance’s face in his hands to meet him in a searing kiss.

Their hips rolled, exquisite and satisfying to grind against each other like the teenagers they were. It felt so fucking _good_ after waiting so long Lance wanted to cry.

Lance slid his palms down Keith’s broad back, memorizing the way his muscles clenched as he moved, and dropped his hands to his waistband. “Can I?”

Keith nodded frantically into his neck. “Yeah,” came out in a pant.

Lance tugged Keith’s swim trunks down, and then his own, just far enough that the parts of them that ached most met. They were both leaking, and hard, and overwhelmed by sensation.

Keith’s hips stuttered, jaw dropping open. “Oh. Oh, fuck.”

And the English word still sounded so foreign falling from his lips that Lance couldn’t hold back a breathy laugh, which quickly petered into a desperate, “Touch me, please.”

He slowly dragged himself against him. “I definitely am.”

All Lance could do was whine and dig his heels into the back of Keith’s thighs.

Keith let out an “Oh” and his hand slipped lower without hesitation.

Lance’s stomach _flipped_ when Keith’s fingers wrapped around him—around them both—rough callouses gentle against his swollen skin.

And he was gone.

Lance let out a long, drawn-out groan of Keith’s name, nails biting into Keith’s shoulders as stars burst behind his eyelids.

Keith’s answering moan was at his ear, high and keening, all the while stroking Lance.

He collapsed on top of him after, a comforting weight holding Lance down.

They took a moment to catch their breath, drinking each other in. Lance adjusted the towel to better cover them and then wrapped his arms around Keith’s back, holding him tight under the unknown stars above.

“Good?” Lance murmured after a while.

He felt Keith smile against his collarbone. “Worth the wait, I guess.”

Lance hummed, grin growing. “Yeah. I _guess_.”

Keith tilted his face up to meet Lance’s lips. The kiss was slow again, a soft wet slide after their hurried rutting.

They stayed like that until the night’s chill crept in even under the towel, and then they reluctantly admitted they should get back to the ship.

Lance took a quick dip to wash off, while Keith just wiped off with the towel. One of these days, they’d have to get to a beach in the summer. The whole team. A little vacation under the sun.

When Lance jogged back to him, Keith was sitting up with his helmet on, still undressed except for his swim trunks.

Lance smiled fondly. “You’re cute.”

Keith lifted his helmet, face tight. “Pidge commed us. Jhenya sent a video message to Voltron.”

His stomach dropped. “What’d she say?”

“They’re waiting for us to watch it.”

Lance grabbed his armour. “Then let’s go.”

 

The bridge was dimmed like a movie theatre to watch the transmission. Everybody was already gathered, waiting for Keith and Lance to get back from their date. Hopefully this transmission wouldn’t ruin the night’s memory.

Shiro nodded at the two of them, apprised of their new relationship status. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“It’s alright,” Lance said. “This is important.”

“Everybody ready?” Coran asked, finger hovering over the play button. They all nodded.

He pressed play.

The screen in front of them blinked black before it brightened, showing Jhenya. Her black-rimmed eyes and bright blue feathers stood out in front of a leafy backdrop.

“Greetings, Voltron!” She snapped her beak in a manner that came across as irritated, but her greeting was as welcoming as ever, so hopefully it was just a weird bird thing. “I’m Jhenya, from the _Starseeker_. I trust you remember me and my sister. And my beloved, Wupa.” She brushed her beak with her wing. “Attached is my sketch of your statue, which I’m prevented from sculpting at the moment, but I welcome you to use if a community you save ever wishes to commemorate you. I’m sure there will be many.”

Coran paused the video to bring the file up on a different screen.

It was a 3D rendering of the five of them, Shiro at the center with a serene smile. Hunk at his side, chest puffed out. Pidge with her arms crossed, chin raised proudly. And on the other side of Shiro, were Keith and Lance, leaning into each other, arms around each other’s shoulders.

Coran continued the video, but Lance couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sketch.

“Wupa didn’t want me contacting you, except to tell Keith that she didn’t regret stabbing him in the leg.”

Keith slipped his hand down Lance’s arm to squeeze his wrist.

“But Keith, I for one am grateful that you accepted it as a wakeup call,” Jhenya continued. “She thinks I’m naïve to think you can change, and many agree with her. But if I don’t believe Galra are capable of change, then all our fighting is for naught. Because one day we will win, but Galra will remain. And if we’re ever to have peace, I have to believe that some of them will see the error of their ways and will want to atone for what they have done. So I do. Because I believe in good. I believe in Voltron.”

Wupa’s scornful voice cut in from off-screen. “Gag me with a spoon, Jhen.”

Jhenya rolled her eyes, otherwise ignoring her girlfriend. “There’s a lot of work to be done. But if we work together, we can do anything. I know that. All the best, Voltron.”

The screen winked to black, leaving the statue sketch on the other screen.

“Now _that_ ,” Lance began, throat a little thick, “is some good PR.”

“Can we hire her?” Pidge asked. “Can we get her on our payroll?”

“We couldn’t afford her,” Hunk said.

Lance laughed, and nearly missed Keith wiping at his eyes.

He tugged Keith closer, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Do you think she’s right?”

“I do.”

“I do as well,” Allura said, smiling at Keith and Lance. “We must stand united if we have any chance of defeating Zarkon.”

“Then I think we have a good shot,” Shiro said.

Lance looked at Keith, who was trying to hide his watery smile behind his hair. A rush of emotion hit him—affection, happiness, hope.

They couldn’t go back, they could only move forward, and maybe that was okay. Today was better than yesterday, and tomorrow would be ever better now that they were finally a real team.

It wouldn’t be anywhere near easy, but he had to believe it was possible.

They could do this. Work together. Mend old wounds. Save the universe.

Keith snuck a peek at Lance, smile growing when he saw Lance looking right back at him. “Yeah, we can do it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again again, thanks to everybody for reading, I hope this was a satisfying ending.  
> Though, it's not really an ending for Keith and Lance, it's just the beginning. They still have their problems, and I was never going to fix them all because that's not realistic, but inter-personally, everything is finally settled, and they can finally start saving the universe as a team.  
> I have no immediately planned follow ups for this verse, but if I end up writing anything else it'll be oneshots (hopefully lol. I cannot shut up).  
> I'm over on tumblr at [katranga](http://katranga.tumblr.com) if you wanna say hi.  
> Here is a [ tumblr post](http://katranga.tumblr.com/post/171530616163/free-to-breathe) to reblog for this fic if that's your thing.  
> Again, thank you, and lemme know what you thought!


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